BMI – not a perfect measure but …

BMI (Body Mass Index) is by no means a perfect measurement of obesity. It does, however, give those of us who are not gym bunnies or heavily muscled body builders some good idea of where we stand in the obesity stakes.

As part of my personal preparation for 2015, I am documenting exactly where I stand on all levels. BMI being only one of the measures I will be tracking. Per BMI, I am classified as “Severely Obese” or “Obese Class II”. So not good; so not good.

The formula to determine your BMI is

English BMI Formula
BMI = ( Weight in Pounds / ( Height in inches x Height in inches ) ) x 703
Metric BMI Formula
BMI = ( Weight in Kilograms / ( Height in Meters x Height in Meters ) )

Check these out! Where do you stand?

BMI colour chart

bmi-chart-for-adults

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That’s it! Enough already!

Hear ye! Hear ye! Public Announcement!

It really is enough now.  Exactly what is ‘it’ and what is enough already? Weight. Hypertension. Blood Glucose (and the edible kind). Fatigue. Insomnia. Indifference. Oh grief, I could go on and on.. and on …

It’s what my dietician called ‘the slippery slop’. Perhaps I should pen that as ‘The Slippery Slope’. Because it really, really is a Slippery Slope people. Actually, no, scratch that completely. It’s the Slippery Gorge. And do please check out the synonym verbs for Gorge hereunder!

The infamous and notorious (there is a difference) Odyssey takes to the road again tomorrow morning. Let’s be clear on this, tomorrow 19 August 2013 at 07h00 my Odyssey takes to the highway again.  I am mortified to admit here on this horribly public forum that I tested FBG and BP this morning and both are notably elevated. Elevated from my usual readings that is – which were last done on 23rd June. That is the mortifying part – the interval between these routine checks. Won’t be permitted to happen again.  I am not mortified about the readings themselves, they are simply proof of severe self neglect. My excuses for this severe self neglect will become clear as I continue to bore you all in the days and weeks to come 🙂

Gorge (per the ubiquitous Google)

Noun
A narrow valley between hills or mountains, typically with steep rocky walls and a stream running through it.
Verb
Eat a large amount greedily; fill oneself with food: “we used to go to all the little restaurants and gorge ourselves”.
Synonyms
noun. ravine – throat – gully – gullet
verb. gormandize – gobble – devour – guzzle – cram

ODYSSEY: All psyched up & nowhere to go!

Yeah well no fine. There I was – on Saturday morning all fired up, fasted and keen to get my latest lot of bloods done.

Tootled along in the new Yaris (now named Ruby btw!) to the lab we now use.. only to find they do not open on Saturdays…. Sh*t… not impressed. I was on my way to pick up my granddaughter to take her to a birthday party so could not shoot through to Milnerton where the Pathcare lab does open on Saturdays. I was planning to go on Friday am but decided on Saturday as Fridays would cut into my working day….. hhhmmm. Will have to go to Pathcare lab tomorrow am.

The regular blood tests have now become even more important in my life as I made some quite momentous decisions recently.

Quite momentous in that I have been battling to curb a backslide in my weight loss progress since all the ‘snot en trane’ of the last half year or so. I need all the help and motivation I can get but I have nonetheless resigned from Weigh-Less.  I will miss the lovely pamphlets they produce and I will miss some of the people I met while there in 2009/2010. I will be glad to have R125 a month more to spend on good, quality food. But for the rest – well quite frankly I truly believe that I can teach most of them a thing or two. Some GL’s are tremendous and others just do not have ‘it’ I am afraid.

I have come to the realisation that I went about my weight loss in completely the wrong way. How can a 25kg weight loss not be a raging success story?  You may well ask! I did the right things for me (I thought) – low GI eating plan mainly of my own creation; using nutrition software to keep track of intake; some increase in physical activity >>>>> and therein lies the crunch!

I have realised that far more than what that damn scale says, it is in fact body fat % that has to be monitored and brought down to within the normal  range. At a 25kg weight loss, I looked pretty darn good if I say so myself and I still get compliments about my June 2010 birthday photo used on most websites I frequent. BUT BUT BUT I was a skinny(ish!) fat person!

If body fat % is right, then the weight will be right too… I think… any comments greatly appreciated here!

Lack of robust physical exercise during my weight loss journey resulted in far too much of that 25kg loss being lean muscle. I can feel that and see that in myself. To rectify the matter will not be a simple undertaking but I plan to give it a go. The low GI eating is resuming (for me the only way to go) and the nutrition software has been ‘re-booted’!  The CRUNCH is going to be the physical exercise – aerobic; stretching; light weights; core;  – dear heaven this is not going to be easy at all!!

Anyone know when I can buy reasonably priced skinfold calipers? I am serious! Can order from the USA for +- $20 BUT the freight costs are very high.  www.chponline.com.

While we are mentioning websites here, check out the new diabetes website www.mydiablog.com. Had a long chat with the founder this evening – a German named Wolf. What a great guy.

Blue Tuesday coming up – had a great weekend out & about in the sunshine so not looking forward to my desk again early tomorrow morning.

Have a great week everyone.

Weight Loss : Spring has sprung .. or so they say…

All rightee! Listen up you lot!  After an absence of over a month from my  soapbox, I am back in full voice! You poor people!

Have endured damn nearly 3 months of pure hell business-wise. No, rather make that work-wise; business is good. The pace has slowed down very slightly from  barely concealed hysteria to the usual controlled chaos!

I also had what I am resolutely calling My Pitstop for the last two months. A slight weight gain over the period which I have firmly decided I will not beat myself over the head about. Various reasons for this and I am fully aware of all of them! Here are a few:

No food journal. Too busy to take time to record what I was eating. It was so easy to just mindlessly eat whatever was put in front of me with my left hand while my right hand was wielding the mouse at literally all hours of the day or night!

No meal planning. No proper shopping trips to make sure we had the right food in the right quantities in the house! Increased incidence of takeaways when we were too exhausted to bother with cooking which was a lot of the time.

Not enough pure water. Too many mugs of coffee (also mindlessly consumed while wielding the mouse!) and not nearly enough portions of fruit and vegetables to make up for the drought. The 500ml Aquelle bottles are now back on my desk – I try to swallow 4 bottles through the day. I particularly like the Aquelle bottle shape and they go to gym with me too.  

No regular exercise. I kept up the mandatory 2 days a month at Virgin Active but did little else there. We went walking several weekends – up the mountain, walked on the beach and over the rocks from Llandudno to Sandy Bay, climbed up above Simonstown to Admiral’s waterfall… All spectacular stuff and we have amazing photos to show for it but it was not nearly enough. We plan another walk this Sunday – out Hout Bay/Llandudno way again. Looking forward to that and do hope that the weather co-operates.

I also joined a unique ladies gym called Adrenalynne. The owner is an amazing person called Lynne who is not young enough to be my daughter which is a plus for me!! She is a previous Mrs Fitness SA title-holder and the fabulous framed photos and qualification certificates in her well equipped home gym have to be seen to be believed! I go (try to get to!) to a twice-weekly class of ladies who call themselves the Golden Girls. Enough said! The first couple of times I went, I thought the gentle dance/stretch routines were a little tame for me. I very soon changed my mind however and have left several classes quite puffed and feeling lekker ‘loose’ all over from all the stretching we do.

Zero self care. Hurtling from one day to the next; battling one computer issue after another. Dealing with multiple and extraordinary client issues all coming at me at once. All culminated in severe stress, fatigue, serious night leg/foot cramps from all the sitting for hours on end and weight creeping stealthily up each day on the scale – that is when I did weigh myself in the mornings!  Most days, I was already at my PC by 4:30am and often stayed right there until midnight.

As I prepare for my resumed onward and downward Odyssey, I am looking at a number of things:

Body Fat Percentage – as opposed to plain old body weight which can be deceptive.

The Metabolism Miracle – a New York Times bestseller by Diane Kress, RD, CDE.  I have never been one for fad diets and I could not care less about NY Times bestseller lists but this book resonates with me and it is anything but a fad diet.

Nutribase software – yeah, yeah, OK. I know. Just do it Eileen!  Don’t mess around with theory. Or get too technical/analytical.

Well, I see it this way for me, myself and I!  I achieved a 25kg weight loss and have almost brought the real Eileen back to life by making a big deal of plotting on graphs, keeping food logs; weight logs; BP logs; Glucose logs; examining food labels minutely, etc. etc.  It works for me and millions of others as well if we go by the sheer volume of health-based software available on the http://www.  So I let you’all know how it goes!

So do let me know how things have been for you over the worst of the Winter? Or the best of Summer for those of you in the Northern hemisphere?

Talk again soon, have a great day, Eileen