Weight: why worry?

Back at the beginning of April, I posted about my goals of losing weight by being on the “non-diet diet.” So, how’d I do? Well, so-so. For a variety of different reasons, I had more troubles than I would have preferred staying with my goals of exercising, not eating empty calories, and not eating too much. Still, I did lose three or four pounds, which isn’t too bad for not trying too hard.

My basic goals are pretty simple and modest, I think: I’d like to lose about five or six more pounds by the end of June and total of about 10 or 12 pounds by the end of August. If I can do that, then I’ll be at the weight I was last summer when we went to Hawaii, which was my weight lowpoint when I was being dedicated to the South Beach Diet. And then in the fall, when I have work schedule that will literally allow me to go to the gym every single day and when I will have few excuses for getting into much better shape, I’d like to lose a lot more.

At the same time, I’ve noticed a series of articles in the paper lately that make me think that is perhaps best to not worry so much about the weight and to worry more about the exercise. For example, there was a piece in last Sunday’s paper about the fact that lots of people who regularly exercise are still pretty fat. There were these reports that people who are overweight but who are otherwise practicing healthy habits (exercising, not smoking, eating healthy food, etc.) live longer than people who have a BMI of “normal.” And I also saw one study that confirmed what I’ve believed all along: it’s the people who are really REALLY fat (that is, folks 90 pounds or more overweight) who are the ones most at risk for various obesity related diseases.

Now, I’m not going to kid myself into thinking that all of this means I don’t need to lose any weight at all; that’s clearly not true. But given that the BMI calculator puts my “ideal weight” as somewhere around 135-140 pounds, a ridiculous weight I haven’t been at since I was in junior high and a weight I am highly unlikely to return to as I make the last lap of my 30s, it does make me feel better about my long-term “ideal weight,” which will put me in the merely “overweight” category.

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