i’m 5’5″ and 180lbs female.. am i too fat dive? i have, what my gym instructor called, strong muscular legs. but i don’t go gym regularly.. in fact.. i havent been going for a few months.. i think the muscles came from carrying my heavy body.. anyhow.. can i go scuba diving?

Answer:
Anyone who is medically fit and comfortably in the water can take up scuba diving. ‘Medically fit’ doesn’t mean built like an Olympian, it means that you have no medical conditions which might cause you problems underwater (e.g. chronic ear problems, asthma, history of heart trouble, etc.). Before you are accepted onto a course you will be asked to complete a medical declaration certifying that you do not have any medical contraindications (at least for a PADI certification). If you can answer ‘No’ to every question, the instructor has no grounds to exclude you. If you need to answer ‘Yes’, that doesn’t mean you can’t dive, but that a doctor familiar with hyperbaric medicine should certify you as fit to dive first. This is for your own safety and comfort underwater. There are only two real issues with scuba diving if out of shape. The first is the physical demands of the sport, which aren’t great, but will nonetheless be more challenging for someone with poor muscle tone and/or stamina, especially in more demanding conditions (e.g. strong currents, waves). Even at the best of times, lower physical fitness will generally result in higher air consumption, hence less time underwater (although this will generally improve with practice). Also, although one is effectively weightless once in the water, scuba gear (at least, the tank and weights) is heavy out of the water, placing extra physical demand on a diver when e.g. shore-diving. These problems can be managed by consideration of dive sites, conditions, and kitting-up routine. The second issue is buoyancy, which is a result of body density not body weight. As several people have already posted, ‘fat floats’–i.e. fat tissue is less dense than water (muscle tissue is actually denser than water), so the higher one’s fat:muscle ratio, the more natural buoyancy one will have. Therefore in order to submerge, a rounded person will need to wear more ballast (i.e. lead weight) than a lean person of equal body weight, all other factors being equal. That said, the advantage of a little extra fat is that it has an insulating effect, since it decreases one’s surface:volume ratio, and therefore reduces the rate of heat loss (which is 20x faster in water than in air, so even a small reduction in the rate can make a big difference to comfort). So e.g. one might not need to wear as heavy a dive suit as the skinny divers, under identical environmental conditions. Anyway, the point is that every case should be decided on its own merits. If you think scuba diving is something you’d like to do, then go for it–I guarantee you won’t regret it. If you’d like any further advice, please feel free to email me through Y!A