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Leo Abstract's avatar

While you're on the subject of numbers and numbers-that-don't-mean-anything, I submit that none of the numbers mean anything. More on this in a sec, but first re: the BMI.

BMI is known garbage, but the basic instinct was good -- weight alone isn't useful but what if we plot weight against height and sex? Given that the scale is the most precise of easily-available measures (tape is too finicky and you'll unconsciously cinch yourself in half trying to get a smaller number), why not plot it against rowing power, or against deadlift, or something else?

As for numbers, they're arbitrary but they do have a psychological effect. For instance, a largely-built american who even as a college athlete never got below 210 pounds and now weighs 315 knows he can get to the nice round number of 300, but never to 200. Why shouldn't he aim instead for 100 kilos? In your case, you're already 100 kilos, but I can't imagine you find 98.2 or 86 very aspirational. If you want to dust off some of your historical britishness, we could say that you're now 16 stone and can certainly get to 15. A nice stretch goal might be 14 (though it's not as 'round' as 15). You're more likely to get to two hundredweight than 14 stone, though. Perhaps that sounds less bastard-american than '200 pounds'.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

Careful, the US customary pound is the same as the Imperial pound, by some miracle, but almost everything else is different. Our hundredweights are not your hundredweights. On this blog we work in metric, which is the one system everyone in the world agrees on.

It's even the official American system, although almost no-one in America seems to know that.

I'm perfectly happy to aspire to 86kg, that's the only surviving record of my weight when I would last have called myself healthy. Forward to the glorious past!

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Leo Abstract's avatar

Oh right, that's where the blasted short and long ton came from.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

The whole thing is a clusterfuck. I saw one of your food labels the other day and it gave carbohydrate levels in grams per 13 fluid ounces. How the hell you can think in units like that is beyond me.

Even though, as a Brit, I like to be 5 foot 10, walk a couple of miles a day, weigh 13 and a half stone and I secretly pine for there to be 240 pence in a pound, the minute I need to talk to anyone outside my own immediate local culture, I just do everything in metric. It's unambiguous and mental arithmetic gets so much easier.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Have you heard of foot-pounds? It's what drives our cars.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

I hear some of them can do 430kilofurlongs between full moons!

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Yea, hard to maneuver on your tiny cobblestone roads I imagine. What with all the ancient churches in the way.

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Leo Abstract's avatar

One could argue that metric is a lie pushed by the blank-slatists. Without metric, an american might struggle to understand his French grandmother's recipes because he doesn't know what the fuck half a boisseau is, but that would be an important reminder that he probably doesn't understand her or that branch of his family as well as he thinks he does. It's a cultural version of small countries having their own currency -- yeah it is a pain in the ass but it (arguably) helps save you from becoming a backwater mined for workers and resources (see Jane Jacobs, "Cities and the Wealth of Nations", though really I'm just using it as a metaphor). America until recently was several distinct nations welded together into an awful chimaera, and we'd have been better off with more units of measurements (and more gauges of railway).

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

You'd have enjoyed pre-revolutionary France. The weights and measures were so chaotic that they were a major cause of the Revolution.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Results still not in, I believe ;)

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

how can a weight be short/long

it hurts

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I think BMI is ok as a rough thing. We're not trying to compare line backers and old ladies here. If your BMI is 35 and you look in the mirror and you consider if you're currently playing for the Rams, you'll know if it's muscle or fat. You couldn't possibly accidentally think you're a professional athlete/bodybuilder.

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Leo Abstract's avatar

I suppose that's fair. I have a BMI of 27 and from your posts I can tell you now weigh less than I do thanks to all the whipped cream. I'm very tall and broadly built, so I don't really have anything to complain about, but I resent any chart that tells me I need to lose 12 kg or almost 30 pounds in order to no longer be 'overweight'. It's doubtless true by historical standards, but it stings. (Maybe I could get there with high-fat keto and I'd probably look great, but the last time I went off keto I couldn't stop eating for close to a year.)

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

I think 27 is a perfectly normal BMI for a broadly built male. (Your height is already taken into account). The BMI classifications are so rough that they don't even bother having different scales for the sexes. A woman with a BMI of 27 is going to be a lot less happy about it than a BMI 27 man.

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Leo Abstract's avatar

Perhaps I'll take my own advice and someday weigh 16 stone instead of 17.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

2 to the 2 to the 2! How round can a number get?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

8 is pretty round, and so's 0.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I'll say that the BMI actually slightly disadvantages taller people, since mass grows by cube, but BMI only by square. If Leo's taller than me (which he'd have to be at higher weight but much lower BMI) than he'll be pretty disadvantaged compared to a 5' human.

Add some muscle, and yea, you could be "overweight."

But then "overweight" doesn't mean "bad" or even "fat," it only means "weighs more than average," which a muscular man will.

Agreed then that 27 is totally fine.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

"allowing the proportion of potatoes in my stew to decay exponentially"

spoken like a true nerd lol

Below 98.2kg ever? Or within e.g. 30 days? Cause that's not even 1 full kg from where you're at, so I'd bet a lot of money that it'll get you below 98.2kg in less than a week.. maybe 2-3 days. Just in water weight.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

Good point. I was below 98.2 in about three days due to water weight loss.

Success criterion should be (I'll edit to fix, thanks):

Below 98.2 once I've stopped ex150ish and regained the water weight and everything's gone stable.

Which I just about managed.

After the rebound had settled down I was 98kg I think, so only just victory.

But my weight didn't go stable. It then resumed dropping quickly despite pizzas and other sins.

So by the time, about four days after that, that I went back on ex150ish it was 97.5. At which point another bout of water weight loss has taken me down to 95kg.

Which is where I am now, happily in ketosis again with enough energy and time to write all this up.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Nice. You seem to be a responder. I suspect you'll be down 5kg "for real" (past water) at the end of 30 days, if you decide to go 30 days.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

I agree, although there are fun things to do looming at the weekend. I may try to survive two parties without eating a carb..... if not then I'll go normal for a bit and wait until my electrolytes are back in equilibrium before trying again. First time into keto was easy. Second time was awful. I don't like the way that sequence extrapolates.

But sure, I think this works for me, and maybe I can drop the rest of my spare tyre anytime I like...

What really interests me now is, if I get shot of all my fat reserves, presumably including a fair bit of stored PUFA, will that have any kind of effect on what seems to be my broken glucose metabolism?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

One way to find out..

Btw on the repeat-keto thing, it tends to get easier for people, not harder. So I wouldn't worry.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

> One way to find out..

It will happen.

> Btw on the repeat-keto thing, it tends to get easier for people, not harder. So I wouldn't worry.

First time I got the feeling that this was something I'd done before, and it was dead easy.

I think the problem second time might have been from doing it twice in three weeks. Buggered up electrolyte balance. And my carefully selected packet of keto-electrolytes is sitting in the office post-room, 15 miles away, not here in the middle of Wicken Fen.

But still, easy does it. Softly softly catchee monkey... Curiosity killed the cat...

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