Steve Piccolo's Blog

About 18 months ago, I read something about Body Mass Index (BMI) levels in the U.S. BMI is a measure (though an imperfect one) of people’s health status based on the ratio between their height and weight. According to the chart I saw, I would have been classified as borderline overweight. That really surprised me! Yes, it is an imperfect measure partly because it doesn’t take body fat into account. But I didn’t see myself as carrying around many extra pounds, though my pants had been getting tighter. I thought the problem was the dryer had been shrinking my clothes, but now I realize it was also me getting a little bigger. Looking back, I see that I ate a little too much at meals and wasn’t exercising.

At the beginning of the 2009, I decided to commit to a New Year’s Resolution to run 5 times per week, no matter what. I’m happy to say I kept that goal. Some days I ran only 1 mile, other days I ran many more and even ran a marathon in October. But another neat thing was that I dropped 25 pounds in weight over the year. I didn’t do anything extreme. I just exercised consistently and tried to eat until I was satisfied but not stuffed. Now I’m not super skinny but pretty lean and have been getting faster (but not super speedy) at running. What was interesting is that I thought my previous weight was my “normal” weight. But now I realize I was carrying around some extra weight and had a lower energy level than I do now.

So anyway, I just wanted to share this with all of you. Millions and millions of $$ are made each year on books, videos, and programs trying to help people lose weight. I know that some people deal with challenges that make weight loss very difficult, but for me the ideal recipe has been consistent exercise and eating in moderate amounts.

Posted on February 18th, 2010 under exercise • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback