Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Healthier Living

A month ago, I reached my New Year's resolution target weight loss of twenty pounds.  I decided to try for another five pounds.  So far, I've lost one of these, giving me a year-to-date weight reduction of twenty-one pounds.

To quantify, twenty-one pounds is an 11% weight loss.  My BMI (Body Mass Index) has fallen from 28 (overweight) to 24.9 (normal).  My percentile for my height and age has fallen from 57% to 31% (U. S. figures), meaning that 69% of the population weigh more than I do for my height and age.   Being at 31% percentile is not necessarily anything to brag about, because being at 50% (average) means a BMI of 27 (overweight).  More than 60% of the U. S. population over 35 is overweight.   But it sounds a lot better than being at 57%.

BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kg by the square of height in meters; or by dividing weight in pounds by the square of height in inches multiplied by 703.  18-25 is considered normal; 25-30 overweight; over 30 obese.

I've also volunteered for the BC Generations Project, which is developing a database of 40,000 British Columbians (300,000 with partners Canada-wide) to correlate incidence of cancer with lifestyle (diet, physical exercise), medical history, physical measurements, and analysis of blood and urine.  It's a twenty-five year study, open to those 40-69.  I completed my initial contribution yesterday.        


 

1 comment:

  1. I've weighed myself 265 times this year. On only 114 days (43%), did my weight decline. On 100 days (38%), it actually increased. On 51 days (19%), it stayed the same. Yet I've lost 22 pounds.

    ReplyDelete