Weight loss stalling, blogging and exercise
I got a pingback from Andy who’s trying to lose weight — and has made it the focus of his blog. He’s making decent progress sometimes, but he also gets somewhat frustrated about the numbers on the scale. See, they’re not going down for him like he wants. He (probably correctly) attributes this to his build-up of muscle mass to replace his fat.
Muscle weighs more than fat per unit volume. That is, it’s denser. So a pound of muscle is smaller (better looking, better for you) than a pound of fat. If you lose inches by building muscle, you may not lose weight right away (they call this “bulking up“). But that’s ok. You look better, feel better, and live longer (statistically). And more muscle burns more energy (and energy comes from calories), so you lose weight faster. All good.
BMI is crap
This brings me to a problem I’ve always had with BMI. The first time I heard of the Body Mass Index was when I saw it demonstrated as a caliper reading of actual body fat. That seemed somewhat reasonable. But one day I stepped on a scale which showed me my BMI. How the hell can a weight/height scale calculate my fat percentage? But honest-to-goodness, that’s how they do it.
And, I’m not making this up. They really consider it to be “a reliable indicator of total body fat“. Right after that statement they cop to the fact that it can be way off on muscular or atrophied individuals, so I guess they forgot about the “reliable” part.
But I seriously know almost nothing about weight training, weight loss, and nutrition. Health magazines and government agencies are focused on the BMI as a useful measure of body fat, so who am I to judge. But I still think it’s crap, or at least unreliable.
It’s a good indicator of health, though. My BMI is just over 30, and that’s high. And I’m fat. Obese? Not really. Maybe a touch.
But I’m rambling. I was saying that muscle is denser than fat. When I was young (and skinny) I could float about the pool with ease. When I hit puberty and began to build more muscle, I found it was pretty easy to swim to the bottom of the pool. Now, as a muscular adult, I find it’s actually difficult for me to stay afloat! I am no longer bouyant.
My wife, meanwhile, floats around on her back like she’s in the Dead Sea (whose high salt content makes everyone float). When I float, I’m lucky if my hair remains at the surface of the lake. When my wife does it, her whole head sticks out of the water. Women have less muscle / more fat than men, on average, and my wife and I are average. But her BMI is only 26. BMI is crap.
Muscle is good
I’m not knocking exercise. For Andy it is his primary focus. He is burning more calories rather than consuming fewer. And that’s fine. But I’m already pretty strong and I know that I don’t have time for a focus on exercise right now. But eating less I can do.
I have some exercises that I do, and I plan to start the regular program from the Hacker’s Diet also. But as Walker points out, a half hour of jogging is equal (in calories) to two slices of pizza. Do I have time and motivation to jog for a half hour every day, rain or shine? No. But I can cut out 350 calories of food every day.
Stalling
Having said all this, it pains me slightly to report that I “stopped” losing weight this week. I mean, I’m still on the chart in a downward direction, when you look at my trendline (thanks, John Walker). But I had got used to seeing the scale drop a half-pound or so every other day. I did “blow my diet” last weekend, but I don’t know if that’s the cause. No matter, because the diet continues, the exercise (such as it is) does also, and the weight will continue to come off. I’m sure of it.
September 16th, 2006 at 7:05 am
Hi, i found your site when looking for the adsense plugin and i thought that i would give you me views on BMI and the whole weight loss issue.
First off, about BMI, think of it as a guide and not a cold hard fact. It is a figure that is more untrue and some true for most people, its based on figures that is no way near your body and how it functions. But BMI is great if you want to get a fast peek at how your system is doing.
Not even experienced physicians or doctors will be able to give you rock solid proof for how your body is doing and what it is doing right/wrong, they will charge your for a similar guide. Its like saying that the life expectancy for a human theese days are 80 years but i see alot of people everyday talking about how their sister died at age 25 or how they just celebrated their grand mothers 92th birthday. Another guide.
About your weight loss stalling, that can depend on a million things because its just how the body works. Sometimes the rate your body burns fat (and muscle if you dont eat at all) slows down and it can have a thousand different reasons. There is one that is especially troubling tho and that is if the body thinks that you are starving, then it will stop consuming calories and store it as fat because your body thinks that you are more or less starving to death and has begun preparations to give it a good fight.
Thats why you cant really loose weight if you dont eat sensible, if you think that you will loose weight and only eat 1000 calories of sweets, then you will problably gain weight. But if you cut down on 500 - 700 calories a day and eat the remaning with smarts and eat fish, chicken and so on, then the body will continue to burn calories and also loose weight.
There is a ton of information to this, what i have learned is that it will feel like you loose less when you stand on the scale everyday and that you will start loosing weight after a considerable amount of time when you have gotten to terms with how it all works, how your body reacts and what you can expect.
Cheers,
September 20th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Ok, so it’s only an “index” in the sense that it’s a “made-up number to reflect your ratio of height-to-weight”. I think the target BMI’s should differ for men and women, or at least for muscular/non-muscular people. As it doesn’t, it’s hard to get worked up about being the “wrong” BMI, when BMI is just a made-up number.
Life expectancy is not something I aim for. I do not expect to die at 80. It’s useful in the aggregate, but no one ever tries to make it personal for me in particular like they do with the BMI. But I appreciate your analogy.
I’ve heard this before, and even experienced it. 10 lbs seemed to be my “starve limit”, after which the body would fight back. This time, though, I think my stalling is totally related to my falling off the wagon. My wife is not on a diet, and sometimes when I’m around her, I indulge in normal eating just for the sake of connecting with her.
This week was her birthday, and I stalled again, ever-so-briefly, as I ate cake over the weekend.
In both cases, I resumed losing weight after the brief stall.
I’m pretty sure if you only ate 1,000 calories of pure sugar and lard every day, you would lose weight, provided you were still able to burn over 1,000 calories per day in energy. However, the malnutrition that would result might make you bedridden at some point, and then your calorie deficit could level off. I understand what you mean about the body (system) fighting back, but even it cannot create calories out of thin air.
This is what I find handy about John Walker’s book. He goes into agonizing detail selling you on the idea that your body weight will fluctuate up and down day-to-day, and that this is expected. Thus, as he explains, it’s important to look at the trendline, not the day-to-day comparisons. I think I understood this intuitively, but reading it, studying it, and using the tools for it make it much more palatable.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m glad to see I’m not the only BMI skeptic.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:58 am
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