BMI

We had some friends over yesterday…I know that’s bizarre that we’re all the way over here and have had friends over but it just so happened that a really good friend of mine, Jan and her husband are over here on holiday too with their family so they were happy to take a couple of hours away from the grandchildren and come join us in our tranquil setting and meet Nick. We’re going over to the hotel where they are staying tonight for their Caribbean beach party so that will be fun. It’s been raining intermittently, quite lightly too not orgasmic pounding rain, just the drizzly dribbly kind, so hopefully it will be clear tonight and if not who cares?

Jan’s had weight issues throughout her life ranging from childhood obesity to anorexia in her teens through to twenties, a period of normality and then an injury leaving her inactive and eventually obese which she’s struggled 20 years to recover from but finally achieved last year with the help of a gastric band. So weight and losing it is always a big talking point for us, we’ve joined many a slimming club and gym together. Due to us both being busy and away and whatever we’ve not seen each other since Christmas. Crazy that we live 2 miles from each other and yet we’ve had our first proper catch up thousands of miles away. Anyway… she was shocked to see the difference in me. It’s great when someone sees you who hasn’t seen you for a while and they are visibly surprised by the change. It’s a real boost. She commented that not only did I look thinner but that I looked so healthy and vibrant which to me matters more nowadays. So among all the catching up we got to talking about BMI.

I’m not a big fan of BMI measurements because they don’t work for everyone. However, love it or hate it, it is a measure that is used by the medical profession and it is a measure used by others like my employer’s medical assessment team and so I have to accept that I will be held up against this chart from time to time and  will have to accept what it says about me.

She asked if I’d been measuring my progress against my BMI which I haven’t and told me how elated she had been when finally she was no longer ‘Obese’ on the GP’s chart and how it had been a huge turning point in her life. So that led to us bringing up a chart and having a look and what I found is noted on a copy of that chart below. The red star to the right being starting point and the red star on the left being where I am now ish. I am so pleased that I have transitioned a whole phase of the chart. That’s got to be good right? Same again and I will be obese no more and that will be official. Talking to Jan and thinking about it I guess I can appreciate that I will be so happy to be simply ‘over weight’. It’s kind of good to know that I’m not so far off no longer being morbidly obese too, I guess in some terms or other that means I have less chance of dying sooner now than I did four months ago which to me is the absolute best kind of progress.

The other thing I noticed was that although I have a long road to travel still, I have done this first chunk with ease so I know I can do it again and then, when I’m bordering on Obese and over-weight, look at the short final push to being in a healthy weight for the first time in forever. This chart has inspired me further and made me really, truly believe I can do this and more than that it’s really made me want to be in that healthy weight zone even if I’m at the very top of it, when I get there, I’m staying there for sure and I really believe that I can do that no matter how long it takes. I’m never going to see that Morbidly or Super Morbidly Obese again and that is worth a bottle of bubbly so I’m going to have one… well at least a glass from one.