The Morbidly Obese Remain Sedentary For More Than 99 Percent Of The Day

Numbers tortured into a confession.

"A new study appearing in Clinical Cardiology examines the average fitness level of the morbidly obese (body mass indexes between 40.0 and 49.9). The findings show that the tested population was sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day and, on average, walked less than 2,500 steps per day - far below healthy living guidelines of 10,000 steps per day. The results provide important links between obesity, poor fitness and cardiovascular disease.

The study used a precise body sensor to continually measure physical activity, caloric expenditure and movement minute-by-minute over a 72-hour period within their home environments. Following collection of the data, structured cardiorespiratory fitness testing was performed on each subject.

Most morbidly obese participants in the study were markedly sedentary. On average, 23 hours and 51.6 min per day were spent sleeping or engaged in sedentary activity and the remaining 8.4 minutes were spent in moderate activity. On average, subjects took 3,763 ± 2,223 steps."

8.4 minutes represent 0.5% of the minutes in a day, so fat people being sedentary more than 99 percent of the day, according to these researchers is mathematically correct - they are sedentary 99.5% of the day.

After this, the numbers get funky.

The figures simply do not seem to make sense.

Here goes.

On average, one interpretation of the results suggests that these fatsos took between 5986 and 1540 steps in 8.4 minutes.

This comes out to between 713 and 183 steps per minute.

The fastest humans on the planet in 1984 were only able to move their legs between 185 and 200 times per minute.

Seems as if the morbidly obese, according to these researchers, are in very good shape, or at least very fast shape.

"'Our findings have important implications for the relationship between obesity and physical activity,' say authors Thomas Vanhecke, Barry Franklin,Wendy Miller, Adam deJong, Catherine Coleman and Peter McCullough of William Beaumont Hospital. 'Our findings will add incentive to increase physical fitness in this population and increase the awareness of healthcare professionals of the need for recommending physical activity in their patients.'"

More likely, their findings have no "important implications for the relationship between obesity and physical activity."

They are just more useless crap and that people who allegedly fail to move 99.5% of the day clearly feel no "incentive to increase physical fitness."

And if this crap research is what is needed to "increase the awareness of healthcare professionals of the need for recommending physical activity in their patients" then we are in worse trouble than people already think.