Between this and http://myticker.com (posted recently), I want to share a theory of mine:
1) the internet is mostly made up of spaces where the median opinion is vanishingly rare among actual humans.
2) the median internet opinion is that of a person who is deep into the topic they're writing about.
The net result is that for most topics, you will feel moderate to severe anxiety about being "behind" about what you shuld be doing.
I'm 40, and I'm active. I ran a half marathon last weekend. I spent 5 hours climbing with my kids this weekend. My reaction to these articles, emotionally, was "I'm probably going to die of heart disease," because my cholesterol is a bit high and my BMI is 30. When I was biking 90 miles a week, my VO2 max was "sub-standard."
Let's assume this information is true. That's OK. It's all dialed up to 11, and you don't have to do anything about it right now.
Across the population as a whole, BMI 30 is basically negligible increase in all-cause mortality. For someone otherwise reasonably active I wouldn't stress about the number. Ideal is somewhere around 27.
BMI is useful for screening purposes but on an individual basis it's meaningless as a predictor of all-cause mortality. What really matters is body composition, or more specifically amount of visceral fat (subcutaneous fat doesn't matter nearly as much).
Where are you getting this number? Over 27% body fat is a health risk. For an active but not muscular individual, 30 BMI is at least 33% body fat, likely higher.
Yes, those are the definitions we have assigned to the number. However, independent of the arbitrary labels, the actual impact on health matters more to me.
Don't feel bad about your VO2 max, the baseline and ceiling are largely genetic. Most people can only bump VO2 max by about 10-15% even with absurd training regimens. Same goes with many of the markers people track - you can control them to an extent, but some people just have high blood pressure or poor lipid profiles and thus need intervention.
Thanks for saying that. Even when I ran every day — with the occasional VO2max sprint day —, my Apple Watch never placed me anywhere but Below Average for VO2max. It was disheartening. Some of these metrics actually put you off training.
1) the internet is mostly made up of spaces where the median opinion is vanishingly rare among actual humans.
2) the median internet opinion is that of a person who is deep into the topic they're writing about.
The net result is that for most topics, you will feel moderate to severe anxiety about being "behind" about what you shuld be doing.
I'm 40, and I'm active. I ran a half marathon last weekend. I spent 5 hours climbing with my kids this weekend. My reaction to these articles, emotionally, was "I'm probably going to die of heart disease," because my cholesterol is a bit high and my BMI is 30. When I was biking 90 miles a week, my VO2 max was "sub-standard."
Let's assume this information is true. That's OK. It's all dialed up to 11, and you don't have to do anything about it right now.