I'm glad to see how many responses have already been posted here! I do want to add my views to the discussion... Please feel free to ignore.
My history: I am a very large woman... you can check my profile for a photo... I don't know exactly what I weigh... I haven't used a scale in years. I'm 45 years old, 5'7" and somewhere around / above 275 lbs. I started diving 6 years ago, I'm now an instructor and have approximately 600 dives logged. I scored exceptionally high on the divemaster speed and stamina tests.
1) Yes, of course... get a physical, make sure your doc says it's ok. Mine has been very supportive. I even consulted a dive doc at a chamber facility in San Francisco when I became a dive master.
2) Can you be fat and fit? Fitness and health are complex concepts, not easily captured by a single measurement. BMI tells us very little, because it simply represents a ratio of height and weight and does not take body composition or any other factors into consideration. Being fat does not guarantee that you will have high blood pressure or high cholesterol... or any of the other warning flags... and, in fact, many thin people have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. etc. If you want more information about how 'fat and fit' can occur at the same time, you might try googling 'health at every size.'
3) Rescuing others and being rescued.... I often find myself frustrated with this discussion. There are MANY buddy combinations where one buddy (or both) could not physically throw their buddy over their shoulder and levitate them both out of the water. Rescue, like many things in diving, is about leverage and managing buoyancy. With that in mind, if you had two divers who weighted the same, the one with a higher percentage of body fat might be easier to rescue because of the added buoyancy. In my 3 - 5 mil wet suit, with no other gear, I float at chest level. During my instructor exam one guy looked at me and slyly asked to be my buddy.... I float high out of the water making rescue breathing simulation very easy. (He could almost have climbed on top of me without sinking.) Since I'm floating... and not dragging on the bottom, I'm very easy to move. In addition to my own natural buoyancy, there is also my gear, just like anyone else's to use in the process... inflate bcd as necessary... drop weights, etc. Yes, getting me back onto a boat if I were unconscious would be difficult... but, it would be difficult to get 250# all muscle man onto the boat too.
4) Strength issues.... Fat people tend to have a fairly large amount of muscle under the fat... after all... walking around carrying the fat is strength training for a fat person. In the water, fat floats... but the strength remains. The fat person doesn't have to deal with the restrictions that weight might cause on land, but still has all the strength and stamina that they have developed fighting gravity.
5) DCS concerns -- yes, dive charts have been modeled using young, healthy, lean men. Anyone who doesn't fit that description needs to give some special thought to how to apply the tables to themselves. We also know that young healthy specimens can get a dcs hit when diving well within the tables... There is no way to totally eliminate the risk of dcs short of staying out of the water. We can change the things we can control -- for instance -- I dive using a conservative computer and I set it to a more conservative setting. Probably the single most important factor -- I do my best to stay hydrated. I try to be well rested for diving, I try to maximize my aerobic exercise / fitness (though I wish I could do more.) My weight, my age, and my gender all may put me at greater 'risk' for dcs... there's not much I can do to change those factors... I can however, be sure to ascend slowly from every dive and take a minimum of 3 (preferably 5) minute safety stops -- typically, I divide my depth in half and take a one minute stop half way up, another one minute stop at half again and then 3 - 5 at 15 - 20 feet. (from 100 feet - stop for one minute at 50 ish feet; another one minute stop at 25 - 30 feet, and 3-5 at 15 - 20 feet.)
Please, please don't let your weight limit your life.... If you wait until you lose weight before doing the things you want... your life will slip through your fingers before you know it. Be informed, take appropriate precautions, and then just do it! Life without diving would NOT be MY life.
OK, I'll step off my soapbox now.
Liz
My history: I am a very large woman... you can check my profile for a photo... I don't know exactly what I weigh... I haven't used a scale in years. I'm 45 years old, 5'7" and somewhere around / above 275 lbs. I started diving 6 years ago, I'm now an instructor and have approximately 600 dives logged. I scored exceptionally high on the divemaster speed and stamina tests.
1) Yes, of course... get a physical, make sure your doc says it's ok. Mine has been very supportive. I even consulted a dive doc at a chamber facility in San Francisco when I became a dive master.
2) Can you be fat and fit? Fitness and health are complex concepts, not easily captured by a single measurement. BMI tells us very little, because it simply represents a ratio of height and weight and does not take body composition or any other factors into consideration. Being fat does not guarantee that you will have high blood pressure or high cholesterol... or any of the other warning flags... and, in fact, many thin people have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. etc. If you want more information about how 'fat and fit' can occur at the same time, you might try googling 'health at every size.'
3) Rescuing others and being rescued.... I often find myself frustrated with this discussion. There are MANY buddy combinations where one buddy (or both) could not physically throw their buddy over their shoulder and levitate them both out of the water. Rescue, like many things in diving, is about leverage and managing buoyancy. With that in mind, if you had two divers who weighted the same, the one with a higher percentage of body fat might be easier to rescue because of the added buoyancy. In my 3 - 5 mil wet suit, with no other gear, I float at chest level. During my instructor exam one guy looked at me and slyly asked to be my buddy.... I float high out of the water making rescue breathing simulation very easy. (He could almost have climbed on top of me without sinking.) Since I'm floating... and not dragging on the bottom, I'm very easy to move. In addition to my own natural buoyancy, there is also my gear, just like anyone else's to use in the process... inflate bcd as necessary... drop weights, etc. Yes, getting me back onto a boat if I were unconscious would be difficult... but, it would be difficult to get 250# all muscle man onto the boat too.
4) Strength issues.... Fat people tend to have a fairly large amount of muscle under the fat... after all... walking around carrying the fat is strength training for a fat person. In the water, fat floats... but the strength remains. The fat person doesn't have to deal with the restrictions that weight might cause on land, but still has all the strength and stamina that they have developed fighting gravity.
5) DCS concerns -- yes, dive charts have been modeled using young, healthy, lean men. Anyone who doesn't fit that description needs to give some special thought to how to apply the tables to themselves. We also know that young healthy specimens can get a dcs hit when diving well within the tables... There is no way to totally eliminate the risk of dcs short of staying out of the water. We can change the things we can control -- for instance -- I dive using a conservative computer and I set it to a more conservative setting. Probably the single most important factor -- I do my best to stay hydrated. I try to be well rested for diving, I try to maximize my aerobic exercise / fitness (though I wish I could do more.) My weight, my age, and my gender all may put me at greater 'risk' for dcs... there's not much I can do to change those factors... I can however, be sure to ascend slowly from every dive and take a minimum of 3 (preferably 5) minute safety stops -- typically, I divide my depth in half and take a one minute stop half way up, another one minute stop at half again and then 3 - 5 at 15 - 20 feet. (from 100 feet - stop for one minute at 50 ish feet; another one minute stop at 25 - 30 feet, and 3-5 at 15 - 20 feet.)
Please, please don't let your weight limit your life.... If you wait until you lose weight before doing the things you want... your life will slip through your fingers before you know it. Be informed, take appropriate precautions, and then just do it! Life without diving would NOT be MY life.
OK, I'll step off my soapbox now.
Liz
