I can’t put it off any longer. I need to lose my post op recovery flab. Six months ago I was in a somewhat enviable position of needing to put on weight but those days are now well and truly behind me. I have put back on the weight I mislaid in the operating theatre plus a few kilos more. So I am setting myself a challenge and hopefully by posting this my professional pride will ensure that I get to a healthy weight the by the time I qualify as a Personal Trainer.

But what is my idea weight?

I will hold my hands up. I currently weigh 75kgs. Which is 11st 11lbs in old money. This time last year I was round about 68kg (10 stone 9lbs) and for the first time in a number of years I felt happy with the way I looked. A year before that I was 79.7kg with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 27.5.  You are considered overweight if your BMI is over 25 and obese if it reaches 30. There have been times when I  have been a hairs breadth from being classified obese. I have a BMI of 26 today.

Now you would think that with all the exercise I do that the fat would just fall off me. Not a chance. As you have probably heard numerous times ‘you can’t out train a bad diet’. Not that  my diet is bad just too much of it. I’m sure there are some people who can lose weight through exercise and not have to worry too much about what they eat but I’m not one of them. The only way I can lose weight is to focus on my diet. And like a lot of women I have spent a good part of my life doing just that. A couple of years ago I felt as if I had it cracked when I got down to a weight where I no longer feared the changing room mirror. More importantly I stayed that way for well over a year. Unfortunately my health problems have knocked me off the straight and narrow. I now need to get back on track.

Now let me get back to the good old BMI. Whilst this is a fairly good assessment of what constitutes a healthy weight sometimes the numbers don’t add  up as it doesn’t differentiate between fat weight and muscle weight.  There are many ‘obese’ athletes that are in top physical health.

A more accurate assessment of health is the waist to hip ratio which  estimates the fat distribution in your body and provides an indication of the risk of developing serious health conditions including heart disease. The waist to hip ratio measurement is calculated by dividing the measurement of your waist by your hip measurement. A waist-hip ratio should be below 0.90 in men and 0.85 in women.

My waist/hip ratio is  dead on 0.85. Not too much to worry about then but not much wriggle room.

Finally there is body fat percentage.

Whereas the BMI gives a broad, general measure of risk. Body fat assessment is much more specific to the how much fat makes up your body weight.

Last year I bought a set of body fat analyser bathroom scales. I didn’t spend much on them so when the reading suggested I had a very high body fat percentage I disregarded the reading. But I then asked my Personal Trainer to do the analysis  by measuring my skin folds using calipers. Alarmingly the results were similar to the scales. In much the same way an athlete can be overweight according to the BMI but not over fat a body fat assessment can make a person of normal weight fat. And this and still is  me. I now have a body fat percentage of 39%. This is way over what I should be according to this table which I have ‘borrowed’ from my personal training work book.

Whatever way I look at it I need to lose weight. Not only am I not particularly happy with the way I look compared to how I did last year the ‘science’ puts me at a weight that puts my health at risk. So it is back to my low carbohydrate diet. Cutting out sugar and wheat and focusing on vegetables, protein and healthy fats.

I’ll keep you posted on how I get on. Hopefully I won’t bore you for long.