<p>BCEagle, it’s different for the women, though. They peak earlier than the men.</p>
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<p>The average age for the top ten women is 26 and there are no teenagers in the WTA top ten. The best ranked WTA teenager is #36. In the past, there were many teenage stars - today, even on the women’s side, the better players are older.</p>
<p>Got in some furniture moving today - I guess that counts as weightlifting.</p>
One of the guys playing doubles today was the guy that could not use carbs or fat for energy during exercise. He was basically metabolizing muscle to do work and would get tired very easily. I found out that he was taking a drug which apparently fixes most of the problem. He was able to play for two hours with some small modifications to the rules. No-ad scoring and choice of who receives on the last point.
I was not aware that we could regulate where the bod gets energy from.
I’m still here… Just too busy to post often. I ran on Friday and Saturday and decided to bag the today’s run. 100 pushups in 4 “batches” - here we go! Now I need to do some lifting of heavy and really, really boring books. 
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<p>BC, is this a specific disease? Do you know what it’s called? I’ve never heard of anything like this. Interesting.</p>
<p>^Weird. I know there’s a condition where your body excretes protein almost as fast as you take it in (which definitely should NOT happen!) and there are drugs to try to control that, as well as a high-protein diet.</p>
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<p>Always better to workout instead of posting.</p>
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<p>It was discussed in this thread quite some time ago as someone else knew someone with a similar problem. At the time, my friend was trying to get it diagnosed and it was really frustrating. They were doing tests for months and months and months and he finally gave up on tennis last year. He suspects that this problem is out there but that it gets ignored because many people just expect to have less energy as they get older but this guy was on the varsity team in college and has played and stayed active. He has had this problem when younger but it wasn’t as bad. It got progressively worse as he got older. His tennis style reflects the problem. He hits a very hard flat ball and trys to put a lot of pressure to keep points relatively short.</p>
<p>Two of the guys asked us or one of us to play next week so I will ask him if he got a diagnosis. There is a medication for it so there must be a decent number of people that have this problem. I can’t imagine living with this sort of thing and am glad that we have pharma companies that can come up with solutions. The difference in him yesterday and last summer was really amazing.</p>
<p>BTW, this guy has always been fit - relatively thin, muscular in the right places for a tennis player. I think that he’s somewhere around 80% of where he used to be. His serve is about 80% in terms of velocity but he said that he modified that so it’s intentional. I suspect that he’s doing some back and forth on the dose to find an optimal level.</p>
As America’s Waistline Expands, Costs Soar
U.S. hospitals are ripping out wall-mounted toilets and replacing them with floor models to better support obese patients. The Federal Transit Administration wants buses to be tested for the impact of heavier riders on steering and braking. Cars are burning nearly a billion gallons of gasoline more a year than if passengers weighed what they did in 1960.
The nation’s rising rate of obesity has been well-chronicled. But businesses, governments and individuals are only now coming to grips with the costs of those extra pounds, many of which are even greater than believed only a few years ago: The additional medical spending due to obesity is double previous estimates and exceeds even those of smoking, a new study shows.
[As</a> America’s Waistline Expands, Costs Soar](<a href=“http://www.newsmax.com/US/waistline-obesity-hospitals/2012/04/30/id/437441]As”>http://www.newsmax.com/US/waistline-obesity-hospitals/2012/04/30/id/437441)
(I thought about posting a thread on this in the forum but I guess that I didn’t feel like creating a controversial topic today)
<p>^And more jet fuel to get heavier planes up in the air.</p>
<p>Here’s something I noticed in friends’ photos of kids posing before prom (it’s that time of year)–almost all of the girls are kind of…heavy. The guys not so much, as they are still growning up, but the girls have matured and are at their adult height/weight.</p>
<p>I see it most during our weekly grocery trip. The percentage of people not overweight is fairly small.</p>
<p>On the positive side, we’re going to Whole Foods once a week in Boston and it’s actually the opposite. A small percentage of people are overweight and the vast majority are either normal weight or even underweight.</p>
I am wondering… how long before companies refuse to hire “obese”? It has started happening with smokers, and smoking and weight related issues are probably the two most common factors in higher health insur. premiums…what do you think?
<p>^ My company just this year started charging higher health insurance premiums for smokers.</p>
<p>I had to sign a form stating I don’t smoke, and if caught lying I could be fired.</p>
<p>I asked if there were any plans to charge more for people who are overweight, and got ignored. </p>
<p>I could see companies refusing to hire obese, or even overweight people. It’s not illegal at the moment, and the cost savings could be considerable.</p>
<p>Once you start focusing on it (which is hard not to do when you’ve lost 90 lbs!), it is really quite breathtaking to see how many people are obese. The checkout line at the supermarket never ceases to amaze me. Low fat milk, low fat cheese, low fat this and that, surrounded by piles of “healthy stuff” like cereals and pastas and bread and fruit juice drinks. At least where I shop, the consumption of junk carbs is off the charts.</p>
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<p>It depends on the job and the ratio of employee value over costs. We have one obese worker (I’d guess BMI in the 35-40 range) that was hired about two years ago in his mid-20s and he’s a great worker. Very smart guy. At this age, I don’t think that medical costs are really an issue though I don’t really know.</p>
<p>In businesses where employee margins are a lot lower, then it may be a factor. There are so many people here who are in pretty good shape that a relatively small number that are overweight probably doesn’t have a big impact on our health costs.</p>
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<p>My former manager smokes. He’s about to retire and he’s quite healthy. I guess he has good genes. I’m sure that his work outweighs any health costs due to smoking.</p>
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<p>I do expect to see more of this in the future.</p>
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<p>Some may hire overweight people in businesses where most customers are overweight. It may make the customers feel more comfortable.</p>
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<p>Losing a lot of weight sharpens your focus on obesity in general but you also notice when most people are thin or at normal weight. As I said before, it is striking when most around you are thin. If you run races or hang around certain parts of Boston (and other cities), you run into a lot of thin people.</p>
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<p>I notice this too.</p>
<p>I was in the cereal aisle (looking at oatmeal) and walked by the energy bar and breakfast bar and saw names like Healthy this or Snackwells - basically the marketing folks do a great job naming foods. There was a couple in the aisle. They guy was strong but somewhat more than a little overweight. The wife was a little overweight. Two toddlers. He was going to buy three boxes of cereal for him and the two kids for the week. Next week I’ll have to see how many calories are in three boxes of cereal for kids.</p>
He’s taking Metformin which is mainly used to treat Type 2 diabetes. It’s also used to treat a few other things. It’s apparently in a family of drugs originally from folk medicine (from the French Lilac). It apparently has some antiviral benefits too.
I have to ask him for a diagnoses. It may be that he doesn’t have one and that this is something that they just tried.
<p>That he uses metformin is fascinating, BCE.
It is counter-intuitive, as metformin lowers bloos sugar to prevent the insulin response. So I have no idea how it would prevent burning of muscle… sounds like it would facilitate that!</p>
<p>I personally think metformin may be one of the most benign AND useful meds out there. </p>
<p>Anyone ever hear of someone with bad side-effects from metformin? I am curious.</p>
<p>Ran 1 mile, walk .15, run 1 mile, on the treadmill. Did my stability ball stuff, it’s getting easier, but I’m much better at balancing my feet on the ball than balancing my hands. I think my upper body strength is a bit lacking. I’ll have to work more on that.</p>
<p>I researched the issue of not hiring obese people or smokers a coup,e of years ago. It is mainly healthcare companies/hospitals who are banning the smokers- at least so far. I am in favor of it and I would not hire a smoker or an obese person. I appreciate all the arguments on the other side, but that’s the way I feel.
More later. Boarding plane.</p>
<p>Someone smarter than I please consider this: Isn’t obesity considered a disability and, therefore, discriminating against the obese would be against the Americans with Disabilities Act?</p>
<p>Also, I remember several years ago – maybe five or so – an internal memo from WalMart was leaked, in which management wanted to hire healthier, fit people (to keep down medical costs) and proposed that one way to do that would be to require workers to go to the parking lot and gather carts. When the memo became public, it was soundly criticized, for discrimination. So even if it’s not illegal (which I think it is), it’s certainly not good PR.</p>
<p>In general, it appears to be very hard to win a case of discrimination based on obesity.</p>
<p><a href=“http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=crs[/url]”>http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=crs</a></p>