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Comment by malbs | Hacker News Reader

The guy claim himself to be a "mildly out of shape 28 year old", and then state: "I consider myself a pretty health-conscious person. No alcohol. No meat. Slow-carbs when possible. Run three miles, three times a week. Pull-ups, push-ups on the days I don’t run" which indicates he's more active than 90% of the population (I just made that stat up)

I was irritated from that point on-wards.

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You stopped too late. The whole post is a farce. Take the title When I Stopped Eating For 2 Weeks. I've actually done this. I mean, stopped eating aside from water for weeks, and it's really no big deal. The body is designed for that kind of privation. He's just some yuppie going for page views without a discernible reason, unless he's marketing for blah-blah-blah health tonic.

>I mean, stopped eating aside from water for weeks, and it's really no big deal. The body is designed for that kind of privation. //

I've fasted for 2 days. I felt weak, dizzy and unwell on the second day (yes I had plenty of water). I was unable to do normal activities. It was a big deal.

That's probably the first time ever you did that. But the body adapts.

My brother is a diabetic. Whenever his suger level dropped from 80, he'd start shaking, have headaches and other hypoglicemia symptoms. A few years now and he can hit much lower levels without feeling any ill symptoms.

Try fasting for a day, see how that works out. Then do it more frequently. Then try two days.

Our ancestors were probably(*) used to spending days hunting for food without success, so occasional fasting should not be that big of a deal.

Also, do some checkups. You might have a condition which is preventing you from spending that much time without eating (low blood pressure, for instance, or even existing nutritional imbalances).

You can do all that and be 'mildly out of shape'.

It depends on what your model is. Compared to the average person, he's more fit, but the average person is rather unfit, so it's a poor comparison.

I think 'out of shape' out to be an objective measure, not a relative measure.

>I think 'out of shape' out to be an objective

And you would be wrong. It's completely subjective. There is no quantifiable definition of 'in shape' other than fat %.

I'm pretty sure there's some more objective measures, like mile run times. There's charts for how long it should take you. There should be some more standard benchmarks for other activities.

I'd also like to suggest it's possible to be "mildly out of shape" and active. For example, if he was "out of shape" and recently started working out.

On the subjective lines, it's possible to be out of shape for certain activities due to the musculature you've built for the activities you do frequently. If all you do is bench weights, you'd be out of shape when you go to run a mile.

I'm like 8-10% body fat if I calculate it (electronic things say about 13%), would you consider me "in shape"? I wouldn't, not in any sort of normal means (running, lifting weights, whatever else).

> There is no quantifiable definition of 'in shape' other than fat %.

This is not a way to determine someone's fitness or physical health. Body fat percentages are highly misleading.

VO2 max is another quantifiable measure of physical fitness:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max

Yeah no meat! That makes me so healthy! Oh look at me!

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