Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Fat

A friend linked this You Tube video:



This is awesome. It's called A Fat Rant, and talks about numbers.

I don't agree with everything she says, but there is a lot of good. The idea of using fat as an excuse (I didn't get the job, he didn't ask me out...) and the power of numbers.

There is so much drama attached to numbers!

And reading a blog from a brave friend who is making a powerful change made me want to put this out there, too.

As of this morning, I weigh 184 lbs. I'm about 5'9" and so by every height/weight chart, I'm moderately overweight. As measured by and handheld bodyfat measurement thing, I'm about 25% fat. I wear around an 8-10/Medium US in most clothing, which comes to a 32 in Korean women's pants, and a 100 Korean woman's top/95 Korean men's. I can bench press over 120lbs, can squat about 180lbs, and can consistently run a 5k on a treadmill in about 31 minutes. My fastest race 5K was under 29 minutes. I would like to lose between 20-25 lbs, which would still put me in the higher end of normal for my height. Because of the amount of muscle I have, I'm aiming for about 20% bodyfat.

To put this in perspective, when I started to lose weight, I hadn't been on a scale in years. I had already lost about a pants size (and in the big girl sizes, there are a lot of lbs between them!!) by the time I got the courage to step on a scale. I was over 280. Which means I was pushing - if not over - 300lbs when I started. Dress pants size 22 were a little snug, and sometimes a 2xl men's t-shirt was tight.

This isn't to say "look at how great I am." Go up a paragraph - when you were thinking, "wow, 184? Isn't that high?"

I guess what I'm trying to say is that numbers only have the power we give them. I'm tired of feeling bad about mine. The first step was paying attention to them myself. Now I'm not afraid to say them out loud.

2 comments:

MUD said...

When you are young, you stand in front of the mirror and chase the illusion that you are in good shape. When you get old, you try to hide from the mirror. The best form of birth control over the age of 40 is a full length mirror. From what you say, you are in pretty good shape so I say go with it. MUD

Ms Parker said...

Walk up to a strange guy on the street and ask him his weight, his pants size, his shirt size... he'll tell you.

I still don't know how much some of my best female friends weigh.

Good on you!