I Want To Get Fat--But Can I Still Dance?

Dear Professor Fatology,

I need help deciding what to do! I am 15 weighing 120lbs with a little belly, I want to get fat but I do dance which i am good at and feel if I get fat I won't enable to dance, what do you think ??? :') xxxx

I think you have been taught by the media (movies/tv/Internet) that if you get fat you can't dance. And that means you've been taught incorrectly. If you frequent gainer sites you will find over and over that it is possible to be heavy and healthy. If you were to gain by eating a lot of “unhealthy” foods (“fast food” that has been highly processed for example) and not exercise at all, then that combination may indeed interfere with your dancing. The point is to do regular exercise and stretching as you gain in order to maintain flexibility and movement.

Let me introduce you to a Canadian, Matt Alaeddine, who bills himself as “the world's fattest contortionist.” While his weight varies (he says it depends on “the candy of the season”) he clearly demonstrates having a belly does not mean you automatically lose your mobility and flexibility.

And let's look at professional athletes—watch any football game and you will see a lot of very large men who have no trouble moving quickly—and their movements incorporate many of the same movements as dance.

And one of the favorite type of athletes who can serve as role models for gainers? Welcome to Japanese Sumo Wrestlers. These are athletes who start off even younger than you are, and intensely train to increase their flexibility and endurance—as well as adding a few hundred pounds to their bodies with a very healthy type of “one pot stew“ called chankonabe.

Here's more detail on Sumo diet and training:

After watching sumo wrestlers grapple, collide and throw each other around the straw ring at the Ryogoku Kokugikan Sumo Stadium, many wonder, what could have made them so big and so fast? The answer is two-fold: training, of course, but also diet.

Weight gain is a crucial part of sumo training since there are no weight divisions in the sport. According to Nihon Sumo Association, 40 out of 42 wrestlers in Makuuchi, the top division, weigh more than 140kg (as of January 2010). The heaviest wrestler, Baruto from Estonia, weighs in at a whopping 188kg. A sumo wrestler's daily caloric intake can reach 8,000 kilocalories, more than twice that of an average Japanese adult male...

Starting the day with an empty stomach is one of the secrets of a sumo wrestler's training, says Tetsuhiro Matsuda, manager of the Takasago Sumo stable.

"You can’t move quickly with full stomach. Sumo training is more intense than you ever imagine," Matsuda says...

A sumo wrestler's day begins around 5am with morning training. They peel themselves out of bed and go directly to the training room. Working out on an empty stomach has its advantages in the effort to gain weight, Matsuda says, as this helps slow down the body's metabolism and makes burning calories more difficult.

At around 11am, the wrestlers take their first feast of the day. The veteran wrestler cook, Chankocho, and the young trainees in charge of the kitchen prepare chanko -- the staple diet of sumo wrestlers. This blanket term for sumo diet chanko comes from chankonabe, a one-pot stew.

Practically anything can go into chankonabe. Many different meats, vegetables and fish are cooked in the boiling chicken broth soup base. Chankonabe is very rich in protein and usually served in large quantities with other side dishes.

"The practice of eating chankonabe dates back to the Meiji era. Chanko is easy to prepare and serve for a large number of sumo wrestlers at once and cost efficient. We eat more salads or side dishes along with chankonabe in Takasago stable, compared to other sumo stables," Matsuda said.

By fasting overnight and before morning training, sumo wrestlers switch their bodies to a fat storing mode when all the dishes are served on the table. Sitting in a circle, they are ready to dig in. Matsuda recalls some wrestlers who eat five kilograms of meat or ten bowls of rice in one meal.

For the skinny wrestlers, however, gaining weight can be an arduous process. They just keep gorging large meals until they throw up -- a famous part of the sumo wrestlers' harsh diet training. Thinking back on early days in his career, Matsuda said he used to try so hard to finish three to five bowls of rice at the minimum, per meal.

Right after eating the first meal, sumo wrestlers go back to their own bedrooms and take a long nap in the afternoon. It helps them to gain weight as all the food is being stored as fat. Then the giants come back again to the dining table around 6 or 7pm.

But doesn't eating massive quantities of food in order to get fat while working out to build muscle seem contradictory and unhealthy? "The answer is a lot of exercise," Matsuda says.

And one of the most delightful dancers was Chris Farley who did a classic Chippendale's spoof with Patrick Swayze on the American television series, Saturday Night Live. If you've never seen this, google search for “Chris Farley Chippendale” on Youtube, and never question whether or not a fat man can dance.

The bottom line—it is possible to be healthy and heavy. It is certainly possible to be large and move quickly and powerfully at the level of a professional athlete, just as members of the NFL and the Sumo world prove on a regular basis. In my experience, there are styles of dance that are more of a challenge for heavier dancers than others. Ballet, for example, often puts extreme stress on joints because of the many leaps and extensions that are part of the dance. It may be that if you want to combine being heavy with dancing, you should explore what style of dance you find the most appealing and enjoyable and what puts less strain and stress on your joints if you weigh more than other dancers in your field. 

 The American television series, Dancing With The Stars has also provided role models for competitors who are not slender by any stretch of the imagination, but repeatedly prove they can certainly dance. Chaz Bono has been one of the recent dancers with the highest body fat percentage.

 And finally, remember at the age of 15, you are by no means finished with your physical growth. Many men don't achieve their full adult size until their early 20's. That may mean that you can experience a “growth spurt” over the next few months/years, where your “little belly” disappears because your body is using the energy to make you taller and stronger.

One other thing--you don't indicate if you are interested in dance because of your personal enjoyment, or if you would like dance to be a career choice.  Frankly, there are many obstacles for heavier dancers in the professional world.  However there have been a number of choreographers who have deliberately worked with larger dancers.  In fact, there's a Cuban dance troupe headed by 300 pound Juan Miguel Mas, that specifically features dancers who are not "standard sized."  

Because of the size of the dancers in Mas's troupe, however, the work of Danza Voluminosa conveys something more earthy and human. Fat people move differently, he said, and the choreography must change.

"We are more mountainous," he said with a smile.

The dancers' movements are often slower than those of their slender colleagues. These dancers favor limbs swinging in pendulous arcs and wavelike motions that seem to ripple through their bodies. They seem to grip the floor rather than to abandon it, keeping a low center of gravity, often crouching or dancing while kneeling or lying on the ground.

And when their dance becomes frenetic, the sheer weight of the dancers thudding across the stage conveys an excitement akin to a stampede, something out of control and wild, yet made of human flesh and blood. It can be a riveting sight.

Mas says he has borrowed from the work of Martha Graham and José Limón but also incorporates moves from African dance, jazz dance and the folkloric dance of the Caribbean, often with West African roots. "I use whatever I can," he said.

There are also other professional dance groups, like www.axisdance.org, which are dedicated to using dancers of all sorts of bodies and abilities, where being "plus size" will not be something would keep you from dancing.  

Best of luck and keep dancing!