Tuesday, January 08, 2008

45 pounds to go?

I was poking around online on the weekend, looking for a way to measure body fat percentage. I found one site where, if you input your height, waist size, neck size and weight, will give you a reasonable estimate of body fat percentage. My body fat % is between 27 and 28, which seemed to me to be making some progress. However, I was more intrigued by another line of the output:

Your ideal weight: 225 lbs.

Isn't that interesting -- something that actually comes close to what I think I should really weigh!

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely detest BMI as a measurement of how "fat" or "thin" a person is. I believe it's a too-simplistic measurement tool designed to artifically inflate the "overweight" population, and doesn't even begin to take into account the number of factors that actually go into whether a person has a healthy weight or not.

According to BMI, since I'm 6' 2 1/2", my ideal weight range should be between 158 and 197 pounds. Now look to the right and see what my goal weight is. Now, let me tell you that even that target is about 10-15 pounds lower than the weight I would be happy with! The reason for that is that I was blessed with my dad's genetics, and he's built like a fullback. (He actually played fullback in semipro ball in the 60s.) My bone structure does not allow me to weigh 175 pounds...and yet BMI would tell you that that's what I should be shooting for.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still shooting for 200 pounds. But, if I happen to plateau around 215 -- or now even 225 -- I'm certainly not going to panic about it.

1 comment:

EVA said...

I agree with you that for 6 feet you should weigh more than what "they" say...My husband is very average, maybe even a little below average...and according to all the charts, he's overweight. It's good that you decided on a goal that is good for YOU.