WW posture and body fat

Submitted by Christine on October 15, 2010 - 10:53am
Body: 

Louise found this wonderful pic and this one of an African woman in perfect WW posture. Thanks, Louise!

What it brought to mind for me, beyond the absurdity of the “neutral pelvis”, is the question of body fat, which I’ve been wrestling with for a few years.

I’ve gained what I believe to be entirely too much weight over the past ten years. I think it’s settling out a bit now that I’m on the other side of menopause, but I’m still pretty chunky.

From all the research I’ve done on hormones, I believe it’s good to keep lean and fit so the body doesn’t have all those fat cells in which to convert androgens to estrogens - and on to toxic estrogen metabolites.

However, I learned something else about extra body fat after taking the worst fall of my life last week. I had a person on hold on the telephone and needed a document from our building next door. So of course I was running at full speed. We live in a little ramshackle 150 year-old New Mexican plaza. The bricks on the ground are high and low and the toe of my sandal caught one of the raised ones. I was airborne like you see on TV football and came down full force on my left side - shoulder, hip, and knee in that order. I was quite certain my shoulder was broken and eventually developed a saucer-size bruise on my hip.

Lo and behold, 24 hours later I was starting to heal and a couple of days after that my arm and shoulder were fine. I attribute that to the extra fat I am carrying.

At any rate, it is good to see body fat on an African tribal woman! So much of Africa is in terrible shape - perhaps this isn’t a recent photo, I have no idea. She looks great and it is classically human to puff the diaphragm out directly under the breasts. Her pelvic organs are well-supported and the increased loads she carries - baby, firewood, etc., only intensify that support.

Christine

clavicula

October 16, 2010 - 12:18am

Thanks, Louise and Christine! Great pics.
I don't know about body fat, I am pin-thin right now (I am not happy), but I really benefitted from babywearing (high back carry). I literally felt my cystocele flatten and my vaginal walls tonen up while carrying DS on my back. Adding some arm flaps helped more. Looking back I think I exaggregated the posture a bit, but maybe I needed it that time....

Sorry for the kinda OFF.
Liv

louiseds

October 16, 2010 - 12:57am

Ouch! I took a tumble last week too. Maybe we were flying through the air at the same time? Sort of middle-aged cyber-acrobats?

Mine was slipping on a chiffon veil during a dance class. I couldn't work out why I had a monstrous achey spot just below my left hip joint when I woke on Wednesday morning. I do have *some* padding there. I fell on the sprung timber studio floor. It made a dreadful thump, but I just got up and continued, despite everybody else's distress, with little pain. I guess the enormous noise is conversion of kinetic energy to sound energy, rather than bone breaking energy. Thank goodness for a safety conscious dance studio!

And thank goodness for a bit of hip padding that I didn't realise I had. Yes, I think there is a happy medium. Fat comes in handy in times of famine too, to protect the gene pool.

Interestingly, in years when feed for our sheep is short before mating, we end up with slightly more female lambs. When feed is leaner, nature errs on the side of maintaining the number of females in the flock, to enable reproduction to simply continue, even if there is not much genetic improvement made on the male side.

When the autumn is easier on sheep we get slightly more male lambs. It is as if nature goes into overdrive when there are good feed conditions at mating, and creates more male foetuses, to increase the opportunity for more subsequent competition between males, and new genetics to come into existence on the male side by eventual domination by the new rams that will eventuate.

It is the same principle as stressing/pruning fruit trees to encourage better flowering, and leaning the axe up against the chook shed to encourage chooks to lay more eggs!

It is all about balance.

BTW, pics like those make me think that genes may be the reason why black Americans have a lower incidence of POP than those of Caucasian or Latin extraction. Negroid women simply 'do' WW posture better!

squeak

October 16, 2010 - 2:01am

Interesting that African women traditionally wear their babies on the back, too...

I am wondering about that because I wear my baby at the front. Can't get my mind around wearing her behind. I do my best to stand in tall WW in spite of her weight at the front. Do you think it's okay? Or should I really try figure out how to put her at the back once she can keep her head up alone?

Anyone had experience wearing baby at the front and still doing ok long term?

louiseds

October 16, 2010 - 2:20am

Babies kinda get in the way of everyday tasks when worn on the front. I guess we are used to wearing them on our front all pregnancy, and keep doing it the same. I would not have liked wearing a big baby on the front, and found that wearing them on the back fitted well once they had head control. It just kinda happened one day with all three of them. Back suddenly worked better.

I have a well built rucksack that is built for camera equipment. I use it as a big handbag that leaves my two hands free, and arms free for long walks so I can swing my arms properly. I find that wearing it on my front when it is loaded heavily is better for my posture. I wear it slung quite low. It is kind of like a pregnant belly. I can sling the hip strap around my sacroiliac area. Quite comfortable.

As long as it is fastened properly, I would just do whatever feels better for you. I would prefer not to have a very small baby on my back. I like to be able to see them. It is sometimes a bit hard to be aware of having a hump when moving through confined spaces. Baby can swing around quite a bit as you move, and bump into door frames and the like, quite easily, on the back. Not good.

squeak

October 16, 2010 - 2:37am

African women carry their babies at the back and balance amazing loads on their heads. As I learn to walk this way it's finally making sense how they manage that. Here are some lovely images :on this blog

Fleur

October 17, 2010 - 3:27pm

Fat around the middle and post menopause seem to go hand in hand. I would love to know how one can get rid of stomach fat/spare tyre without losing weight from the face. Any ideas? In the UK it's recommended that a waist measurement for women should not exceed 32" and for men, 37".

Christine

October 17, 2010 - 7:26pm

Now that’s quite the mental image, Louise. ;)

Fleur, I would find ways to keep some of your testosterone from turning into estrogen (you can google testosterone-raising foods and find lots of results), such as lowering stress levels, eliminating caffeine, and getting eight hours of sleep at night. It is true that pulling the abdominal wall up instead of in stretches the spare tire into a much more pleasing shape. WW posture kind of does away with the concept of “waist”.

:) Christine

louiseds

October 18, 2010 - 12:53am

Fleur, I think the maximum waist measurements are take from research about who is prone to health problems; what it is that characterises a risk. Carrying weight around your middle seems to be one of the risk factors, but I suspect that being big around the middle might be more to do with posture and the strength of the muscles of your torso, particularly the oblique and transverse abdominus muscles, than it is about catching a bad spell from the sickness fairy if your tum goes over the maximum. People who have a smaller waist also tend not to be too overweight.

People who are physically active and have posture that supports their abdominal and pelvic contents, and who eat in a healthy way will not be setting themselves up for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. These are the diseases that fill our public hospital beds, and cost our countries big bucks because the ongoing health costs are high for these patients. They are not diseases that go away. They just make the person sicker and sicker over a number of years, and chew up the health dollar.

Waist measurement is a very blunt instrument. You cannot tell me that a tall woman with an apple shaped body, who eats well, doesn't smoke, and exercises regularly, who has never had much of a waist, is an equal risk to the petite, slightly overweight smoker, who plays the Pokies all day, and eats junk food, even though their waist measurements may both be over the recommended maximum.

There is a lot more to it than waist measurement. Waist measurement is just one of the statistical flags that comes up when measuring a person's disease risk.

I think you will find that all the weight loss people agree these days that you really cannot prescribe what part of the body will lose fat, other than by exercising the bits that are not as strong as they could be. Once you firm up the floppy bits by exercising them the whole body has experienced health benefits, and a different, stronger body will emerge.

Do some people watching next time you are waiting for a bus, or have half an hour to kill. Observe the enormous variation there is between individuals. There is no doubt that skinnier is more healthy than fatter at the extreme ends of the spectrum, but there are so many different shapes of people.

We tend to one or other of the three basic body shapes. If you tend towards endomorph (apple-shaped), you will always have a higher waist measurement for you height than an ectomorph (bean-pole shape) or mesomorph (pear-shaped) person.

What are you? See http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=353693871456

I think the really easy answer to the question about how to lose fat around the waist without losing it in the face might be to exercise everything below the chin. ;-)

Oh yeah, and don't read too much into the specific 'shoulds' and 'should nots' that we read every day. They just lead to guilt, which is about the most powerfullly destructive emotion conjurable. Just use your commonsense.

Louise