Morgan, who is head of the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders, says that, for every man with an eating disorder, another ten desperately want to change the way they look. “One in five men have some degree of quite extreme distress,” he says.
It's a bit of a lazy article though, doesn't bother interviewing men who have a more healthy workout ethic. When are they going to start interviewing mansizers?!
As for me, a bit of both really. I started off training for physique and have moved more to training for strength.
If you dropped 3 stone of fat in the next year, and you kept it off in the long term, you'd look better, yes, but you'd also be a lot healthier. I bet your blood pressure, risk of heart disease and a whole bunch of other "indicators" that I can't think of or don't know about, would all improve as well.
Whilst looking better maybe the driving force behind what you're doing, you're becoming healthier at the same time.
If you dropped 3 stone of fat in the next year, and you kept it off in the long term, you'd look better, yes, but you'd also be a lot healthier. I bet your blood pressure, risk of heart disease and a whole bunch of other "indicators" that I can't think of or don't know about, would all improve as well.
Whilst looking better maybe the driving force behind what you're doing, you're becoming healthier at the same time.
Yeah, I do appreciate that.
Are there any tangible indicators of "improving health" does anyone know, that I could check myself?
Thinking of things like resting heart rate (maybe).
I think there are boundaries set by the medical profession for what is an acceptable resting heart rate. Any higher than the top end or lower than the bottom end and you're considered unhealthy.
Some random stuff off the web:
While there is some debate on this topic it seems that a healthy heart rate is:
Between 60 and 75 beats per minute for men and between 60 and 80 beats per minute for women.
The fitter you are the lower your heart rate will be. Some professional athletes have a resting heart rate as low as 30 beats per minute! On the other hand, if you have a heart rate over about 80 beats per minute then you should seek medical advice regarding your health and diet as you may need to make some changes.
So as long as you fall in the 60-80 category, I would worry. Mine was 60-something last time I bothered checking. I don't believe that getting it down to 50 - if that's possible - would make me more healthy.
