• MentalEdge@ani.socialEnglish
    73·
    6 months ago

    I really don’t like the trend of looking at peoples bodies and using that alone to determine whether the amount they are currently eating is insufficient or excessive. The way someone looks just doesn’t tell you that except for at the really extreme ends of obesity and starvation.

    We don’t know enough. Only she does, and whether she is acting upon what she knows in a way that’s healthy, isn’t something the commenters can know, either.

    That does not look like 35kg to me, unless she is tiny af. Which she might be. The self harm scars in other posts obviously mean she’s been not ok at some point, but may not necessarily mean she’s still struggling now.

    While I’m all for encouraging healthy living for everyone, that does not look like catabolysis, or like so much definition to be cause for worry due to a fat percentage approaching nothing.

    People can look very skinny, or quite thick, without reaching a point that comes with significantly increased health risks. If nutritional needs are being met, muscle and fat mass can vary a lot without being unhealthy.

    That’s not to say you can go as low as you like as long as you eat right and avoid catabolysis, low body fat has some drawbacks of it’s own, but they only kick in when approaching very low percentages. Fatty tissue serves many biological purposes and as such eliminating it entirely or pushing towards a very small number, has adverse metabolic, pulmonary and immunological affects. Above all, the nervous system is absolutely reliant of fatty tissue.

    • SatouKazuma@ani.social
      3·
      6 months ago

      Having just looked up catabolysis on Wikipedia, with all of the accompanying medical qualifications that gives me 😆…

      How is that definition different from what occurs during a normal, well-planned weight cut?

      • MentalEdge@ani.socialEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        That’s lipolysis.

        The difference is that under normal circumstances the body does not consume muscle, nor all its different kinds of fat stores. Not all fat in the body serves as mere energy storage. (The brain is about 60% fat, lipids are a crucial molecule in the way neural cells function)

        Lipolysis is also a more short-term process (hours), while catabolysis occurs long-term to facilitate continued functioning during prolonged starvation (days-weeks).

        Basically, your body has started consuming parts of itself that it will not survive without in the long term. The final stages consume the proteins that process proteins, meaning eating again at that point won’t save you, because your body is no longer capable of metabolising food.

        • SatouKazuma@ani.social
          3·
          6 months ago

          Huh. TIL. Thank you for explaining! Sometimes I wish I went pre-med in uni, but medicine still fascinates me, even though I’m nowhere close to being a doctor. Is that a bad thing?

          • MentalEdge@ani.social
            3·
            6 months ago

            Not at all.

            I’m no medical expert either, I’ve just looked into this in my endeavour to take care of myself.

            I’ve talked to both doctors and nutritionists about my body composition, and what to look out for if I want to alter it in some direction.

            I really don’t like the way my face rounds out when my body fat gets to the 13-15% range, so most of my life I’ve maintained a mere 8-12% by altering my diet whenever things go in a direction I don’t want.

            That’s easier as a man, but as a tall dude with disproportionately long limbs, who doesn’t get bulky even when I strength train, it does mean the rest of me ends up looking skinny to the point I start getting comments about “starving myself”, even though the numbers aren’t even close to unusual.

            I do have muscle, I just have to flex them for it to really show, and because my limbs are long, and my fat genetically tends towards intravascular, people looking at me come to complete nonsense conclusions.

            That I have personal experience with people trying to feed me more than I want to or actually need to eat, makes it especially irksome seeing it done to others.

            Sure, if you have full overview of someone’s diet, exercise, and body composition, as well as a graph showing the changes in those things over time, then you could start making conclusions about what kind of changes may be warranted.

            But someone’s weight and torso from a single point in time, tells you literally nothing unless they are visibly in the process of wasting, or morbidly obese.