Dieting results in long term changes to hormones and muscle fibers.

[eridani]

300. These people are part of a very, very small minority

Even with very, very loose standards for success, there is only a 20% success rate for fat people. You ought to quit channelling Mitt Rmoney--most people really, really cannot get as rich as he has gotten.

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nutr.21.1.323?journalCode=nutr

We propose defining successful long-term weight loss maintenance as intentionally losing at least 10% of initial body weight and keeping it off for at least 1 year. According to this definition, the picture is much more optimistic, with perhaps greater than 20% of overweight/obese persons able to achieve success.

IOW, about 4 out of 5 people weighing 300 lbs can't even lose 30 lbs and keep it off for more than a year. For those people, significant weight loss is indeed pretty close to hopeless, and they would be better off to focus on specific excercise and dietary changes with the goal of maintaining the behaviors regardless of how much weight they lose. Note that the authors of the redefinition maintain the National Weight Loss Registry, which is about as optimistic as people in the field ever get, and that they stay optimistic by setting pretty low standards for success.

Please stop telling me that if 6-8 hours a day of fully loaded bike touring results in no weight loss, then there must be something that I could do that is way easier which will have different results.

I don't have the athletic talent of successful fat athletes, but I admire them a great deal more for prioritizing athletic success over weight loss. For that matter, doing anything well regardless of weight is my ideal.

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/28/local/me-18062

Here are some numbers on Dave Alexander, triathlete

Finished 276 triathlons in 37 countries in 17 years.

- Swam 9.6 miles, cycled 448 miles, ran 104.8 miles in a recent super-triathlon in eastern Hungary. His time, he says with perfect recall, was 85 hours, 46 minutes, 38 seconds.

Those are pretty remarkable numbers. But Alexander has a few more: He's 55 years old, 5 feet, 8 inches tall and 260 pounds heavy.

Alexander's silver hair is thinning. His bright blue eyes are going bad. His barrel stomach is getting bigger. Other triathletes often mistake him for a race organizer.

"I'm a great bar bet," he says with a laugh. "I don't look like I can walk across the street, let alone run a triathlon."

http://www.fortunecity.com/olympia/romario/912/gnews186.htm# (unfortunately you have to pay $4/week to get at the 1999 archives)

She does not want to be perceived as a novelty, greeted with grins and stupid questions. She is large. She is a weightlifter. And she is, thank you very much, an Olympic medal hopeful. Cheryl Haworth, a high school junior, stands 5 feet 9 and weighs 300 pounds. She owns every record in every category of American women's, junior and school- age weightlifting in the super heavyweight class.

She just turned 17 last week.

At the March national championships here, she easily topped the women's field and, for good measure, outlifted every male her age. She is so strong, U.S. women's national team coach Michael Cohen said, some high school football coaches avoid her training sessions at the state-of-the-art weightlifting complex in Savannah, Ga., so as not to demoralize their players.

<snip>

Even four years after her debut, she continues to make observers exclaim. In Frederick, she snatched an American record 264.6 pounds and lifted a record 319.7 pounds in the clean and jerk. She runs the 40-yard dash in five seconds flat, an excellent time for an NFL lineman. She has a 32-inch vertical leap, which would satisfy a college basketball coach. Her flexibility is equally impressive: She can do a split both with her legs splayed to the front and back as well as sideways.

http://www.haverford.edu/news/stories/59061/51 (More recent link)

At first glance, Olympic weightlifting might seem out of place amidst the scholarly brawniness that generally defines Haverford. But then again, Olympic medalist Cheryl Haworth has never been one to uphold traditional expectations.

Haworth, who has been called “the strongest woman in this hemisphere,” visited Haverford last week as a part of both the ongoing art exhibition And the Winner is… and the Strange Truth Documentary Series. She currently holds the North American record in the clean and jerk lift (319 lbs.) as well as the snatch (275 lbs.) and has competed in three Olympic Games, winning the bronze medal in 2000.

Her weightlifting prowess, however, isn’t the only thing that sets her apart. While Haworth weighs about 300 lbs., she remains flexible and agile. She’s fond of boasting that she could out-jump all but two players on the U.S. Olympic Volleyball team and even run the 40-yard dash in 5.5 seconds. In her free time, though, she’s an accomplished artist and received a B.F.A. in Historical Preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design.