January 1st, 2016, I looked into the mirror and told myself:
“Michael you are fat.” I know that it is not PC, but problems cannot be
solved without stating the problem. I started what I called my Quest for a Healthy BMI.
Target weight was for a BMI of 25 or 175. Since that
time my lowest weight was167 pounds. What I discovered, is that
keeping the weight off is hard. I allowed myself to gain weight back up
to 195. My current seven-day moving average weight is 186.5. My current
goal is 170.
Some of the reasons that I am doing this again are:
Vanity: I liked the way I looked.
Makes it easier to sail, dance and be active.
I do not have support for the damage that overweight causes later in
life. I do not want to be a burden to my family, friends or society.
This time around, I am not looking at BMI as the goal target. I am going
to use the body fat percentage. Currently, I am 23.8% or average. I
would like to be at 17% or at the fit level. The number is based on the
chart from American Council on
Excerse:
Description |
Women |
Men |
Essential Fat |
10-13% |
2-5% |
Athletes |
14-20% |
6-13% |
Fitness |
21-24% |
14-17% |
Acceptable |
25-31% |
18-24% |
Obesity |
>32% |
>25% |
To my body acceptance friends (yes I have been called anorexic because I
wanted to be healthy). From experience and observation, nature does not
care about my feelings. These two paragraphs from Rising Obesity in the
United States Is a Public Health
Crisis
is scary enough to get motivated again:
Obesity is a grave public health threat, more serious even than the
opioid epidemic. It is linked to chronic diseases including type 2
diabetes, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease,
and cancer. Obesity accounts for 18 percent of deaths among
Americans ages
40 to 85, according to a 2013 study challenging the prevailing wisdom
among scientists, which had placed the rate at around 5 percent. This
means obesity is comparable to cigarette smoking as a public health
hazard; smoking kills one of five Americans and is the leading
preventable cause of death in the United
States.
The obesity crisis may be less dramatic than the opioid
epidemic now
gripping the nation, but it is just as deadly. Opioids accounted for
around two-thirds of the 64,000 deaths related to drug overdose in 2016.
Excess body weight leading to cancer causes about 7 percent of
cancer-related
deaths,
or 40,000 deaths each year. This number doesn’t include deaths from the
many other medical conditions associated with obesity. Obese people are
between 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely to die of heart disease than people
with normal body mass indices (BMIs).