My friend, let's call him Nick Beef, started an Atkins-esque diet about a month ago. He weighed 260 pounds at the time and he's lost 20 pounds so far. 10 days ago, after getting annoyed that we had to choose lunch restaurants based on his new dietary requirements, I decided to try to lose some weight as well. I have been drudging along at about 185 pounds for the last year, which is 10 pounds more than the 175 I weighed for the previous 11+ years.
I've never been one for diets - life is too short - but that attitude was much easier to justify when my weight was in an acceptable range. I wasn't sure how much commitment I'd be able to muster on this attempted diet, but I started losing weight right away so the positive results have kept me going. After 10 days I've lost exactly 9 pounds and I'm down to a slim 176.6 lbs.
I checked a Body Mass Index calculator today to find out where 176 stacks up, and it turns out that it falls just outside the "Normal Weight" classification. That's another way of saying that I'm still in the "Overweight" classification. In fairness, those classifications are pretty agressive by lazy American standards. Check out your own weight here and you'll probably be pretty mad at the BMI calculator. It doesn't factor in age, for example, so if anyone knows of a better calculator let me know.
So my goal was to go from 185.6 to 175.0. Now the BMI calculator tells me that I need to hit 173.5 in order to qualify as "Normal Weight". I guess I'll stick with this diet through the weekend and hope that I can get there. I'm about 10 days away from heading to Vegas for the annual March Madness debauchery so I really want to hit this target weight before then.
By the way, the photo accompanying this post is not a photo of my torso. It's some stock photo I lifted from Google images. If it were a picture of me you can be assured, among other things, that I would have cropped the photo about an inch higher at the bottom.
9 comments:
So are you and Nick Beef hitting the Wingshak daily, hold the fries?
Man, that's a lot of meat. That's what she said.
We are indeed. It's hard to believe that a steady diet of chicken wings is the recipe for weight loss, but you can't argue with the deep fried, garlic peppered results.
that picture is seriously grossing me out
oh man i am 5 lbs away from being underweight. That would be awesome.
I predict you'll gain all the weight back by the end of Vegas and then have to repeat the cycle all over again.
Buffets, here we come!
BMI gets way too much attention. It's a very high level measurement that is open to interpretation. Getting a body fat test is a much better measurement.
http://gordsfitnessblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/body-fat-testing-vs-bmi-measurements.html
Could you tell me more about this "Wingshak"? What do they serve at said location? Is it delicious?
So here's the problem. I was hungrier than normal this morning, waiting for the stroke of noon so I could head to the Wingshak, when I stumbled across this site:
http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/
Odds of me staying on this diet through the weekend just went up to 400-1.
This is whay Jillian Michaels from the biggest loser says about BMI:
"Another thing not to rely on is the body mass index (BMI), which determines the amount of fat you have on your body according to your weight and height. Here's why you're not going to use it: It fails to distinguish between fat and muscle, so the BMI will ultimately give you an incomplete sense of the shape you're in.
Today, the medical industry has set its weight guidelines according to the waist-to-hip-ratio method, which is a much more accurate way of arriving at an ideal goal weight. Follow these steps to find yours:
Get a tape measure and measure your waist right at the belly-button line.
Standing with feet hip-width apart, measure your hips at their widest point.
Now simply divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. This is your waist-to-hip ratio.
The ideal waist-to-hip ratios are 0.80 for women and 0.95 for men. "
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