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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Reasons to Lose Weight - #9

I really wanted to write up an interesting, in-depth post on this, but I can't seem to get it together at the moment. All of my brain power is being expended on other things. So...here we go...

I have wondered in the past whether I really need to lose weight, or whether it's just vanity. Yes, according to the height-weight charts & BMI chart I am overweight. But there is some question in my mind as to how well those things work - can you really apply those measures to everyone? For example, they do not take muscle mass into account. Not that I'm a body builder or anything, but I do work out and I definitely have muscles. Also, when I gain weight, it tends to be fairly well distributed - I don't put it on all in one spot. Most people are surprised when I say that I am technically overweight, it seems that I don't really look it.

Enter the Waist-Hip Ratio. This has been around for a while. As a matter of fact, shortly after we were married Moon went to the doctor, and the doctor pulled out a measuring tape, calculated his Waist-Hip Ratio, and told him to lose 50 lb (which he didn't do, by the way). That was at least 5 years ago. Change takes time I guess, because it is still being referred to as "new".

Here are a couple of links that I'm sure explain it all better than I could:

Waist-hip ratio best predictor of heart risk

Bye-bye BMI? Tape may measure obesity better

To sum it up though, the idea is that belly fat is dangerous so a comparison of a person's waist and hip circumference is a better indicator of whether they are overweight. For women, when you divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement, it should come out to no more that 0.8, for men the magic number is 0.95.

So, being unable to resist all these little tests and calculations that tell me how unhealthy I am, I had to try it out. My only reservation here is they say to measure your waist at your navel which is the smallest part of your waist, and for me I don't find that is the narrowest spot. So I compromised and measured right above my navel and came up with: 0.829.

So there you have it - I am still officially overweight, according to the WHR calculation, and that is this week's reason to lose weight.

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Daily Record
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Weight: 142.6

BF: Kashi Granola Bar, coffee w/cream
Lunch: Not sure, meeting a friend for lunch
Supper: Kickin' Chicken, rice, stir-fried veggies

Planned Workout: Lower Body strength & 45 min walk on treadmill

1 comment:

the Bag Lady said...

Okay, the Bag Lady did the math (well, actually, the calculator did the math...) and her ratio is 0.842, so golly, sounds like she's overweight. Sheesh, guess the scale is not lying, like she was hoping. Sigh.