Regular readers of Conglomerate know that I have been working to reduce my weight. When I initially disclosed my plan on October 5, I was down 12 pounds since early August. In a comment to that post last month, I noted that I had lost 23 pounds. Today, I reached my goal for 2008 (a week early): down 30 pounds!
One of the gazillion imperfect measures of health and well-being is the Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a rough measure of body fat based on height and weight. When I started focusing on my weight, I was well within the BMI "Obesity" category. As of today, I am merely "Overweight."
The change is noticeable enough that people have started asking, "How did you do it?" Which makes me think that I should plan this out. Maybe I could end up with an endorsement, like Jared the Subway guy. One of the many problems with that idea is that my approach has been mind-numbingly obvious: start exercising and eat less.
Of course, the simplicity of my approach and the ensuing success makes me wonder why I waited so long to start ...
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1. Posted by Anthony on December 26, 2007 @ 20:53 | Permalink
Congratulations!
Re: planning things out, forget endorsements. You could write your own diet book. The Lawyers Diet. It could start with a Contract with yourself chapter, move on to Tortious torts... you get the idea. You could take your old school's Law in Action idea and do a spin off workout video (an emphasis on the "in action," of course).
All joking aside, congrats. Its a wonderful accomplishment, esp. given the trinity of diet disaster (Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas) over which you've done it.
2. Posted by Cliff on December 27, 2007 @ 0:39 | Permalink
congrats Gordon! Perhaps moving to a location with less cheese and milk had something to do with it...
3. Posted by Christine on December 27, 2007 @ 8:43 | Permalink
Congratulations! I would also suggest that you unwittingly found the "Moving From Wisconsin Diet." We found that moving away from Kopp's seemed to correlate with a little weight loss as well.
4. Posted by D. Daniel Sokol on December 27, 2007 @ 11:47 | Permalink
It strikes me that the number you really should be measuring is your body fat percentage. According to the American Council on Exercise, the magic percentage that moves you from overweight to "acceptable" is hitting 25 percent or less body fat.
I could analogize this to corporate law by noting that some legal scholarship focuses on the wrong right side variables.
5. Posted by Gordon Smith on December 27, 2007 @ 12:34 | Permalink
Danny, I am no expert, but I think BMI is supposed to be a rough measure of BF%. Here is one conversion formula (others here):
Adult Body Fat % = (1.20 x BMI) + (0.23 x Age) - (10.8 x gender) - 5.4
In my case, that ends up pretty close to my BMI. Also, my BF% was measured in a high tech device at BYU when I started this project, and it was pretty close to my BMI at the time.
6. Posted by Chris Schreiber on December 30, 2007 @ 23:10 | Permalink
Congrats Professor Smith - that's great!
As an aside, BMI is fairly good for the average person - its failure is with people with large amounts of muscle and lower body fat percentages such as body builders (for instance, most body builders and avid weightlifters measure "obese" or the high end of "overweight").
Also, for healthy eating, this is a very good resource: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/
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