We all know that the BMI is bullshit for most people. I know that it was once touted as the most accurate measurement of “healthy” weight but it just fell short. In demonstrating this I have included my personal table that I hang on to in order to let me know just how obese I am. When I started out, not just this time but at least one other time in my life I was pushing against 295lbs. I don’t want to say 300 because that is a mental block I have, much the same as women have a mental block about the number 200. Regardless of how much you weigh, a 300lb man is, without question, a problem. It’s just that we were brought up on average people of average size and for the average male (who is apparently 5’8.5″ in Canada and 5’10” in the USA) being 300lbs would be a major problem. What I did know, at almost 300lbs was that I was fat. I wasn’t prohibitively fat, I could still work out fine, look OK in a t shirt and jeans but I was definitely an imposing figure. There are pictures in this blog of me which I won’t traumatize you with again, I also have pictures of my at under 200 from when I graduated university before I really hit the weights hard in my 20’s and you can see that although I am much larger, I don’t look unfit/fat, just, well, a bit fat. So what is the point? Well, according to my chart, I was “Severely Obese” which basically translates to near death as far as I can tell but if you go by what the papers say, it makes me pretty average in the USA! So, obviously something had to be done and long story short, I plummeted from Severely Obese into Class 2 obese with little problem. Getting into the Class 1 obese category took longer but by August of 2007, my wedding, I squeaked into Class 1. I made it back in again January of 2009 and again in May of 2009 but seemed to bounce back into Class 2 with regularity. By October of 2010 I was rising to the top of the Class 2 class and getting concerned. Without answering the question of why, it just was a long roller coaster. I was working out the whole time, even doing P90X with regularity as my weight continued to climb prompting me to tell lies to myself about gaining muscle and maintaining my strength. You can even follow my workouts here, since I started this blog in June of 2009 and even though I was working out I wasn’t paying attention. Sure, my weight went down after I started, round 1 of P90X got me about a 20lb loss if I recall correctly but the issue that I clung on to with both hands was that I was working full time and coaching 2 nights a week which wiped me out while doing longer than necessary workouts. As I have evolved and learned during the last 19 months of documenting my physical work I have come to realize 3 things:
1. I have an excuse for everything
2. Excuses don’t work, working smarter not harder works.
3. If I am not documenting my weight, I am probably not eating right.
So there I was, doing P90X, doing P90X / Insanity together and still as my fitness improved, my weight really didn’t do much. It wasn’t until my parents came to visit that I realized that I wasn’t really in control of what was going in with my diet and therefore my weight. I stumbled upon the Paleo method of eating and a light bulb went off in my head. It was the same thing I had done back in my rugby playing days to get into shape and drop some weight to get ready for the University rugby season. So I decided to jump on the bandwagon October 11, 2010 (Canadian Thanksgiving) and here I am.
This wasn’t supposed to be a post about the Paleo diet, or about my weight history, in fact, the whole point of this post is the amusing notion that my goal weight of 220lbs is, according to the BMI scale, still Overweight (and borderline Class 1 Obese!). But with a lean mass of 200lbs I am thinking that 220lbs is a pretty aggressive goal especially for someone who has never had a bodyfat % lower than 12% (and that was in University while I was spending up to 3 or 4 hours a day working out).
I suppose I could be disappointed that even after dropping 34lbs I am still borderline Class 2 but since I was 248.4 this morning I am not about to complain. I am on my way to my goal, to be Overweight!