Stage two fatloss….Today's post:  Thursday, 11-1-2018

1.  Good news first.  If you totally remove all the things that cause addiction to sweets and breads and only eat at meal times as Susan Peirce Thompson teaches, you’ll be less fat and much healthier.

Our last few posts have explored this in some detail. 

We’ve shown this works better when you delete foods and drinks that fatten and sicken you in addition to the sugar and flour she rightly says to remove.

Last week we covered how to do that and feel better too.

We’ve often covered how adding effective strength training and vigorous but brief cardio with rests or easier parts can help you feel better and lose more fat. And this protects your health too.

2.  The less good news is that if your weight for your height shows a desirable BMI, your belly fat may still be excessively high and you’ll still look fat and your health will be at more risk than your BMI would predict.

In my case:

a) If I come close to 5 ft 7.5 inches after working on my back to become a bit less slumped over and get down to 161 pounds, I'll drop out of the fat by BMI category. 

At 170 pounds, I only need to lose 9 pounds of fat to do that.  I’m close enough now that adding the heart protective foods and supplements I take my risk is likely low.

b) But my WHRatio, waist hip ratio -- my waist measurement divided by my hip measurement, of 1.10 shows my potential risk of cardiovascular health problems is very high. 

And, with my big belly, I definitely look fat!

To be low it needs to be .89 or less.  If I can add muscle and subtract fat from my upper thighs and butt, my hips likely would measure 38.5 & .89 x 38.5 = 34.2 & 34 would = .88.

To do that, I need to gain muscle. Likely I need to gain at least 5 pounds in my legs and butt and the larger muscles in my back and chest. 

I’d also need to lose 5 more pounds of fat; but gaining the muscle will do part of that.

3.  The photos in Mike Matthews’ article on percentage body fat, show that those changes would drop my percent fat from 30 to 33 % to the 12% range.  That likely would come close to helping me lose the 9 inches on my waist from 43 to 34 that would put my waist hip ratio into the desirable range.

4.  The bad news is that many people in the United States who escape being obese are fat a shown by their waist hip ratio.  Not long ago, 40% were listed as obese by BMI.  But of the other 60 % at least a third were fat by their waist hip ratio.  This is 20% of everyone.  And, by adding the two, that means that at least 60% of people in the United States were obese.

Because, since then, the Baby Boomers have gotten older and many have gotten fatter and the younger people are consuming far more of the fattening foods and drinks, as many as 75% of all the adults in the United States.

5.  This means that the gap between what will help keep people healthy and looking good and where they are now is quite large.

I’m working on ways to overcome this.

I invite and encourage you to join me.