{"id":2846,"date":"2011-07-22T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2846"},"modified":"2011-11-26T22:53:32","modified_gmt":"2011-11-26T22:53:32","slug":"how-fat-is-really-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/07\/how-fat-is-really-fat.htm","title":{"rendered":"How fat is really fat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regular readers will know about my “Fit at 40” challenge<\/a> and I have to say it’s pretty hard work right now. I lost the first stone<\/a> (and a bit) and\u00a0I built up to the point where I ran my first 10K race<\/a> (albeit a little slower than I would like) but now it’s into the real hard slog… and I’ve found that I need to focus a little harder (although I’m still heading in the right direction).<\/p>\n

I mentioned previously how my friend and former colleague, Garry Martin, is providing motivation with a sponsorship deal that requires me to meet certain targets that we have agreed as realistic but challenging. I will<\/em> lose the three-and-a-bit stone, and I will<\/em> run three races of at least 10K before my 40th birthday – but I really do hope to do a little better than that (let’s call it a stretch target!)<\/p>\n

Friends and family keep on telling me that I’m looking slimmer, fitter, and healthier, but I put that down to wearing dark colours, a recent holiday leaving me suntanned\u00a0and breathing in\/standing upright! The fact is that the scales tell me I’m not shifting the weight fast enough – and the running is getting harder, not easier. Even so, I decided to take a look at my body fat measurements.<\/p>\n

It seems that, in the UK, health professionals are obsessed with the Body Mass Index (BMI) – a simple calculation based on height and weight<\/a>.\u00a0 That’s all well and good, but some of us really are “stockier” than others<\/a>.\u00a0 According to a simple BMI calculation<\/a>, I am obese (I am) but, I’ll\u00a0still be overweight when I reach my goal… in fact, I’d need to get below 12 and a half stone to be “healthy”, despite having not been that weight since I was a teenager (and still growing up, rather than out).<\/p>\n

In theory, all of this exercise is helping me to build muscle so it makes more sense to understand just how much of me is fat.\u00a0 For a while, I was using one of the many calculations available on the ‘net but they really do vary tremendously. So much so that they can only be considered as a guide (not much better than the BMI):<\/p>\n