Twist of Fat

Weekly weigh-in: 202.4
Loss: +0.9
Total loss: -90.3
Body fat percentage: 15.2
BMI: 24.5
Emotion: All-business


Welcome, my friends, to the show that never ends.

It’s been a solid year on plan, but Act Two promises some fundamental changes in the program. This has become much less a weight-loss journey and much more a search for a fit and healthy future.

I’ve known all along that strength training wrecks havoc with my scale. Take this week for example (please take this week…). I had a solid enough week, with six days of exercise, one meal eating out and the rest of the time eating on plan, or close enough to it for government work. I even ran my ass off as I powered through a few more days of C25K.

And all that being good as gold earned me a crappy gain. Thanks for nothing, strength training!

Except I know better…

Greta from Big Bottom Blogger has been hounding me for a while to discount the numbers on the scale and start paying extra attention to body fat percentage and BMI.

But aren't we trying to rid ourselves of all the fat? Well, most sources agree that the human body requires a certain amount of fat for good health. Fat helps regulate body temperature, store energy and cushion and insulate organs. The percentage of body weight that makes up this “essential fat” is around 4% of body weight for men and roughly 10% for women. Beyond that, there’s a somewhat wide range of what’s considered a healthy percentage of body fat.

The American Dietetic Association recommends that men have 15-18% body fat and women have 20-25% body fat. Healthy male athletes might be as low as 5-12% body fat, and healthy female athletes could be as low as 10-20%.

Dr. C. Everett Koop's site, ShapeUp.com, breaks down healthy body fat ranges by both gender and age. Men under 39 years of age should have 8-19% body fat, and women under 39 years of age should have 21-32%. Older men may range from 11% to 24%, and older women may range from 23% to 35%.

The American Council on Exercise says men's body fat should be 6-25%, and women's should be 14-31%.

Doctors increasingly use Body Mass Index (BMI)–not body fat measurements–to determine whether or not a person is overweight. BMI is based on a mathematical formula using height and weight that estimates overall body composition. There are handy BMI calculators and tables all over the internet, so it’s easy enough to figure you can see where you stand.

Here’s the breakdown of BMI standards:

* Underweight = <18.5
* Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
* Overweight = 25-29.9
* Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

So… I’m still feeling my way with all these new metrics, these new ways to gauge my bearings on this journey. I’ll get comfortable with it all soon enough, I suppose.

There’s still work to be done.

And I’m ready to get down to business.

The Time of Our Lives

Welcome to "Same Old Sh*t" Saturday, where I have a tendency to repeat myself, a tendency to repeat myself. I'm still suffering from a rampant case of the Spring sillies, so I dusted off another serious post to balance the teeter-totter. Speaking of teeter-totters, I believe it's time for me and Pisa to go check what's shakin' on the playground...

Tick tock, tick tock.

Do you feel the rush of time slipping by like I do? I felt it more acutely when I was at my heaviest, but even now I sense the drumbeat of the calendar and feel cheated by the senseless waste of all those lost days.

That’s exactly how I feel now: that days and weeks and months (and, let’s face facts here… years) spent wrapped up in that uncomfortable and unfashionable fat suit was precious time that I squandered and have no way of getting back.

I mourn those spring days when I couldn’t run around and enjoy the breezy springtime, pity those once-in-a-lifetime moments with my family where I sat on the sidelines and watched good times being enjoyed and lament all those times I let my weight make me feel like less of a person than I was. I regret that I felt defined by my greatest weakness.

I’m fortysomething now, and once you make that turn to the back nine, you grasp with a little more clarity the fact that we don’t have all that much time on this earth. William Penn said “Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst.” I think it takes a bit of gray hair up top to fully get a handle on that.

I play basketball with some young cats, and they often seem tickled (and somewhat perplexed) by the fact that I still hoop so competitively and so often. I explain it to them like this: “We’re both at Disney World on a bright sunny day. For you, it’s 10 o’clock in the morning and you’ve got all the time in the world to do anything you want. For me, it’s thirty minutes before the gates close and I want to get in every ride I possibly can.” I don't know how much longer I can run with the young dudes, but I do realize that my serious playing days aren't all that far from an end.

I feel that way about the big picture, too. About life. There’s quite a bit I still want to accomplish, and up ‘til now this weight has been a big roadblock holding me back. Maybe it has been for you, too. For too many of us, it’s the anchor that makes us give in to the hardships and the hopelessness. It makes life seem unfair when, really, we’ve simply been unfair to ourselves.

That’s hard to accept: we did this to ourselves.

I don’t say all this to bring you down, to remind you of your own mortality or your own shortcomings.

I say it because it’s time to shake things up, time to remind ourselves that although we may have a finite number of days in this joint, we have an infinite amount of possibilities, a limitless number of things which we might accomplish if we set our mind and our heart and our will to it.

I don’t know if I’ll achieve everything I want to achieve or accomplish everything I set out to do from here on out. Chances are, I won’t.

But here’s the thing: it won’t be the weight that stops me anymore.

This is a brand new day, my friends. A new day filled with all kinds of promise, all kinds of possibility. There’s not a diet tip or weight loss secret I could share with you here that would be of any more use, any more important than this simple phrase: “time’s a’wastin.”

Get busy and get yourself in check. Take the steps you need to take to reclaim your body, your health, your life. It's the most important thing you'll ever do because it's the foundation for everything else you want to do, everything else you want to be.

Do it today, because tomorrow will be here in less than a blink, and you don't want to be that person who looks back and wonders what they could have had, what they should have done, what they would have been.

It's time to get going.

Tick tock, tick tock.

You Might Be a Fat-Neck…

I’m so, so sorry…

This post has no redeeming qualities. All I can do is tell you that I’m suffering from the worst case of the Spring sillies I’ve ever had. I try to maintain some semblance of balance on this blog, but lately I’m just a 24/7 goofball. I don’t know if it’s the warmer weather, that I’ve dropped a ton of weight or some combination of the two, but I seem to be wearing a perpetual grin.

I’ll get my act together soon and serious this space up a little, but for now the best thing is probably for me to just try to work it out of my system with the silliest stuff I can write…

• If you can pinch an inch on your forehead, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you smoke turkeys after sex, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you are completely fluent in drive-thru speaker-speak, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If your favorite food is seconds, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If the back of your neck looks like a pack of hot dogs, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you get diagnosed with that flesh-eating disease and the doctor gives you twelve years to live, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you’ve got six different pizza places on speed-dial, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you put butter in your coffee, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you belong to “Hot Pockets Anonymous”, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If your favorite scent is tartar sauce, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you get on “The Little Engine That Could” and it says “Oh Hell No!”, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you’ve ever driven a car with a Filet-O-Fish in each hand, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If your kids use one of your dresses as a backyard tent, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If your necktie is only three inches long after you tie it, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you put mayonaise on your Lipitor, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If your shadow weighs over 100 pounds, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you say “Trick or Meatloaf” on Halloween, you might be a fat-neck.
  
  
• If you’ve eaten a can of frosting since beginning to read this post, you might be a fat-neck.

A Radish By Any Other Name…

Folks don’t eat enough vegetables, and I think I figured out the reason why: most of them are just so poorly named that them hardly come off as appetizing. Who wants to eat something called “parsnips” or “turnips”? These items, like a lot of their veggie companions, need a branding makeover.

• “Asparagus” sounds too much like “ass”. New name: “Tender Yum-Yum Sticks”.
  
  
• 

“Artichoke”? Please! Nobody wants to eat something that has “choke” in its name. New name: “Sugar-coated Funplant.”


  
  
• “Cauliflower” actually doesn't need a whole lot of help. I mean, the word “flower” is nice and friendly. Now what dog does everybody like? Lassie! New name: “Collieflower”.
  
  
• 

“Mustard Greens”? Huh? This is one that I don’t get at all. They’re not yellow. They don’t taste like mustard. It just doesn’t make any sense. Besides, not everybody likes mustard. New name: “Ketchup Greens.”


  
  
• “Brussell Sprouts”? No. “Baby Boom-Boom Cabbages”?. Oh hell yeah!

  
  
• “Eggplant”? Ridiculous. In Europe, they refer to it as “aubergine,” but that sounds like a new line of fragrance or some sort of skin rash ointment. New name: “Tastyglobe”.


  
  
• “Okra?” That’s an easy fix. New name: “Fried Okra.”
  
  
• 

“Bell Peppers” put people off because they expect them to make a ringing sound when you shake them. The best thing to do would be to add a ringing sound chip but easiest thing would be to change name. New name: “Clapperless Bell Peppers”.

  
  
• “Celery.” Just the sound of that word makes me grimace. But I could munch on it if it had an enticing handle. New name: “Savory Crunchsticks”.
  
  
• “Squash”. Is this a joke name? Did people used to just squash these plants for fun before realizing that you could actually eat them? New name: “Lovemunchkins.”
  
  
• “Chard.” Now that’s just harsh as names go. It needs something softer, more gentle, more inviting. New name: “Miracle Goodness Greens”.
  
  
• “Kohlrabi”. I’m sorry, but if I’m naming a vegetable, I try to keep from making it sound like a race of alien villains from Star Trek. New name: “Chocólate” (the “ó” makes it different than regular “chocolate”).
  
  
• “Rootabaga”. – Actually, this is a perfectly named vegetable.
  
  
• “Radicchio” – I’ve never liked this one. It sounds like you’re nose will grow an inch if you eat it. New name: “Mmmm Mmmm Stuff”.
  
  
• “Spinach”. Despite Popeye the Sailor Man’s efforts to make it popular, this leafy green vegetable has never gotten its due. There's only one person who can change that. New name: “Sh*tach.”

Do your part in helping people eat more fresh veggies by immediately adopting all these new names. The sooner they catch on, the sooner everyone can start benefiting from eating better and living healthier.

The Jack Sh*t Players Go Camping

Not So Silly

My guess is that I wrote this guest post for Jody at Truth2BeingFit.com before I came down with my really bad case of the Spring sillies. Seems like ages ago...

Fast Forward Through C25K Week Three

“I always loved running... it was something you could
do by yourself, and under your own power.
You could go in any direction,
fast or slow as you wanted,
fighting the wind if you felt like it,
seeking out new sights just
on the strength of your feet
and the courage of your lungs.”
~Jesse Owens

I can’t say that I’ve embraced running to that degree, but it’s growing on me. Of course, I have to remind myself that I’m currently on a round of Lamisil for a fungus that’s growing on me.

As the running portions of this program expand, I’m having to rethink my approach. In previous weeks, I’ve just run when the voice on my little iPhone app says run and walked when the voice says walk. Now it seems more like I need a strategy for survival.

Up until now, I’ve just listened to whatever items come up on my iPod, whether it’s a Spanish lullabye, Rush Limbaugh podcast or zydeco dance tunes. Now it seems I need to get more calculating with my music choices.

I thought the theme song from “Rocky” would be a smart choice, but I wound up punching my neighbor in the neck and then shaking my hands above my head and celebrating.

Then I tried Kanye West’s “Stronger”, an upbeat hip-hop standard, but I picked an edited version and I kept stopping to see if I could work out what the missing dirty words were.

I flipped over to something from “A Chorus Line” but me doing high-kicks wrecked havoc with my running form.

Finally, I hit on my perfect running song...

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man,
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.
I'm strong to the finich
Cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

I'm one tough Gazookus
Which hates all Palookas
Wot ain't on the up and square.
I biffs 'em and buffs 'em
And always out roughs 'em
But none of 'em gets nowhere.

If anyone dares to risk my "Fisk",
It's "Boff" an' it's "Wham" un'erstan'?
So keep "Good Be-hav-or"
That's your one life saver
With Popeye the Sailor Man.

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man,
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.
I'm strong to the finich
Cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

Strong to the finish... you see, that really speaks to me. I'm going to keep going, keep pushing myself, keep heading for unchartered waters. Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper once said "A ship in port is safe... but that's not what ship's are built for."

We were built to go, built to move.

Built to run.

Now if I could just find me some spinach-flavored gum…

Help me bolster my "run for it" playlist. What songs make it easier for you to pick 'em up and put 'em down? What tracks keep you on the track longer?