5'5" Female Age 62
Dec 2013 Beginning BMI = 26.7 Time to "do something" about my weight
Feb 2014 Found this site & began lurking, joined in May
Dec 2014 BMI = 24.7 Vanilla NoS works
2015 = 23.1 Good compliance, whittled portions
2016 = 25.8 Lots of Red Days
2017 = 27.2 AWOL
2018 = 25.8 Vanilla NoS works
Wed Mar 07, 2018
Maybe musing here counts as productive?Oolala wrote:Am I making an attempt to fill up on other pleasurable or productive tasks? Am I liking life better?
At least I am not eating.
Yikes!
Last night I did further research on health consequences of obesity, and some of the things I discovered scared me big time. I hope the fear is real enough to keep me motivated...
We all know that weight is not necessarily a good marker to watch. But I have a 36-year habit of weekly weigh-ins, so I am not likely to stop now.
I was looking around to see what else might be better. I decided that for me, waist circumference (WC) might fit the bill. My body type is definitely in the apple category. I have large breasts, but from the front I look like a ruler. How does one even measure a non-existent waistline??? I did my best and measured several times, coming up with a range of 98-102 cm.
Just for reference, my hips are 98 cm and almost never change, meaning my W:H ratio is 1 or greater. Okay, so my W:H ratio is always going to look bad, just sometimes more bad than others. Don't think I will bother with tracking that.
But WC itself is on a larger scale, meaning that variations can be noticeable, assuming of course that I ever manage to get decent readings!
So I will begin to record WC the first week of every month.
I constructed this chart for quality control purposes:
Waist Circumference Categories for Women
72-80 cm Normal
80-90 cm Overweight = moderate increase in health risks
90-100 cm Obese = high increase in health risks
100-110 cm Extremely Obese = flirting with death
How depressing! Obese, with small hope of ever seeing Normal.
But I'm not sure I am totally convinced that all my belly fat is the worst kind.
1) My ancestral family was full of "apples" who lived well into their 90s.
2) At least some of my waist fat is right under the skin.
3) At least a tiny portion has to be re-arranged muscle & internal organs. I have never been the same since pregnancy even when the scale was lower than pre-pregnancy.
However, I will agree that no matter where excess fat is located or what kind of fat it is, it is best to lose it.
On the bright side, I discovered these encouraging remarks:
Waist reduction of just 5 cm significantly reduces risk.
Fat is lost from high-risk sites first.
I am especially encouraged by Guidelines for the Leptin Diet:
1. Fast at least 11 hrs. between dinner & breakfast.
2. Eat 3 meals/day with 5-6 hrs. between.
3. Eat slowly & stop slightly less than full.
4. Include protein with breakfast.
5. Reduce carb intake.
And this article by John Douillard:
Dangers of Frequent Eating
Following Vanilla NoS guidelines should help re-set healthy hormone levels and remove excess fat from my body.
Calorie Destinations:
Immediately burned for energy 1-3 hours after eating
Short-term fat stores around the waist unless I burn them 4-6 hours after eating
Long-term fat storage
Three hints:
Ingest fewer calories at meals.
Take a walk or move around within 3 hrs of eating to burn off those short-term stores.
The longer I wait to eat again, the longer I keep burning fat.
Enough for now. Time to go live life.