sempers

Hmm. Body Mass index. Fat Content. Etc.

Check out the Body Mass Index of an olympic athlete. Bet you they'll be obese (honestly!) Muscle is heavy in relation to fat. Don't take these things too seriously.

Best indicators of fitness (IMHO) are resting heart rate (low = good within reason), and how fast your HR returns to rest after being elevated.

- Mark.

EvilBevel

Yeah, well we should add the wifes to the equation then eh, you doc git

52 / 1.68 / 1.68 ... 18.4 hmmm ...

Sad thing is: she eats more than I do I hate her.

At least I can loose 20 kg, up my power to weight ratio, and become healthier in the process ! You'd still be stuck with your midget turbo & annorexia

john banks

BMI is a valid and reliable population screening tool. Its positive and negative predictive values are not 100%, but neither are those of any screening tool, and there are always outliers and special cases to be considered. If you are an athlete or very muscular consideration of % body fat is also useful. Not all athletes of course have high BMIs. Many are low depending on their sport. Overall level of fitness is a completely separate question, and would need to be tailored to your chosen sport, or a general estimate would involve variables such as the ones you mention along with respiratory function and performance measurements. Not dis-similar to cars really.

Tiggs

look in mirror- you'll know if you need sorting out.

Crapaud62

I still like the idea of getting a picture of yourself in your swimming gear and sticking it to the front of the fridge.

I also found that those pictures of Cilla Black in her underwear turned me off my food for weeks

MarkJackon

Cut a little used limb off

The Cilla Black thing is a can of worms you dont want to open, may work on food but could spoil other parts of your life.

Grapefruit in the morning helps

Swimming, I am going to start a separate thread, I have a rant !

fast bloke

Chelle - drop the mad diet. You will fit into the dress as it is

Honestly though - I eat waht I want and do loads of excercise. I did put on a stone after stopping smoking, but I took it off again by increasing excercise and cutting out choccie and crisps for about a month.
I'm sure John will correct me if I'm wrong, and i appreciate that this is a simplistic view, but a pound of fat would produce approx 3000 calories. So all you need to do is eat what you have been eating, and burn an extra 42000 calories. This sounds like a lot, but over a period of 2 months, that would be 700 a day. 1 hour extreme excercise or 2 dog walks and 30 minutes in the gym should bring you near this. You also have the benefit of increasing your metabolic rate by excercising constantly, so you will burn more calories in the course of a day. If you simply diet, your body starts to prepare for a famine, your metabolic rate decreases, and you need less calories, so you stop losing weight anyway

sempers

John,

Wasn't trying to say BMI is not valid, just that it's not gospel - more of a rule of thumb.

E.g., @ 5'9, I come out with a BMI of just over 25. I go to the gym regularly, RHR circa 65, race sailing dinghies a lot. Sure, there's (always) room for improvement, but I'm in pretty fair shape, despite my BMI suggesting I'm in trouble - (not that I'm bitter )

Anyhow, I seem to be subverting this into a fitness thread from a weight loss thread. Sorry!

- Mark.

imlach

1

[Edited by imlach - 1/16/2002 5:15:48 PM]

john banks

Agree with you Mark. There is rarely one right answer.

tonybooth

BMI theory was blown wide open on the news tonight. It said Matthew Pinsent's BMI is 28 and he is 'therefore' overweight.

Yeah right

TONY

Little Miss WRX

Correct FB your body does prepare for a famine but it can only last so far I know

philc

What was explained to me and seems to make sense is that diets don't work because if the body feels hungry, it doesn't start eating into the fat tissue, the body starts eating into the muscle tissue - cos the body needs fat when its really, really desperate for food.

So the idea is to exercise, to the point of being reasonably breathless; the body isn't hungry, but uses the fat tissues to feed the muscle tissues; hence a slimmer, better shaped body (and a more fit body).

So - I go the gym 3 times a week for an hour, cut out just the biccies and choccies, otherwise eating reasonably (never feel hungry) and since starting in November have gone from 112kg to 97kg - about another 10kg to go.

dead chuffed actually.

Any comments from the resident doctor?

sempers

No doc, but yup, you've hit the nail full & square on the head.

That is pretty much what is meant by the body preparing for famine, your body re-adjusts to a lower food intake in other ways, not necessarily by getting rid of that fat you wanted to go.

- Mark.

DavidRB

BMI = weight / height ^ 2 ?? How can that possibly tell the difference between a fat person and a muscular person who weigh the same and have the same height?

The only semi-believable fat measurement that I know of is the one where they weigh your body on land and then weigh you fully submerged underwater. Because fat floats and muscle sinks, the difference in the weight lets them tell the difference.

However, as any health professional will tell you, the most useful device for gauging your muscle/fat ratio is a mirror.

john banks

I find that unless I work out the BMI I am generous with people. A 20% range of "ideal" weight covers a lot of people, and you are not classed as obese until you are over 30kg/m2 - making you 50% heavier than someone at the bottom of the normal range of the same height. We can all identify exceptions - that is not the point.

I don't have a flotation tank in my surgery. I wish would be a good place to put some people

When you have an average of 6-10 mins per patient and they bring five problems of varying importance at once, believe me BMI is very useful compared to more involved method - a screening tool has to be simple and acceptable to the population. The people I need to tell about their weight are not the ones down at the gym getting skin fold thickness assessments.

Anyway, I have a day off work today making a boost controller so I am not talking about medicine.

[Edited by john banks - 1/17/2002 12:54:12 PM]

Tiggs

i say again- look in the mirror

john banks

For that you need insight. Mirror doesn't work if you have a distorted body image - either way.

Trout...

Stop eating all the pies!

That's my diet

Tiggs

if you have distorted body image then you have bigger issues, that said i ammened my statement to "look in the mirror if you're not suffering distorted body image"

however- i would suggested there are far more ppl in the UK with distorted bodys than there are those with distorted images and, as a sweeping genrelisation the distorted bodies are costing us more in hospital beds, GP waiting rooms, etc, etc with diabeties, heart probs, etc

Tiggs (on soap box)

stephen emery

had me kitchen knocked out!
getting a hand made one
2 months
should help

john banks

Agree Tiggs.

Silver_Impreza

Stevie C, mail me with recipe and directions on how the diet works??

Please !!! Needing to loose a stone (OR MORE!! )quick!

MichelleWRX1994

Okay to be blunt, I suffered from anorexia 5 years ago. SO the distorted body image is partially correct.

However I am putting on a little bit of weight and to save me spending money on buying size 12 clothes I would prefer to be able to still fit into my old ones which a reperfectly fine to still wear! I need the money for repairing my lil scoob!

I want to lose weight sensibly and not revert to the torturous routine I did a few years back.

That is why I am seeking advice as Scoobynet is a massive fountain of knowledge and I know there are some peeps who can help me.

Cheers,

Michelle.

rr_ww

Michelle

Bear in mind we've just come off Christmas and the New Year so a little excess weight will probably just drop off when you return to a more regular diet. All these high class socials you go to

I guess the easiest way is to set yourself attainable targets. If you want to drop 5 stone in 2 months its never going to happen. Good Luck and remember if you feel miserable and eat a Mars bar it doesn't mean its all for nothing and you've failed or let yourself down.

Keep us all posted.

Rich

[Edited by rr_ww - 1/21/2002 9:13:46 PM]