Stat-Tasticks

Bang Bang! Two shots rang out as the butler scrambled over the upturned end tables toward the maid’s cupboard. Her corset torn on the nail of the false crucifix, a crimson trickle of blood wended its way between her alabaster bosoms, braving the dark crevasse. “Calgon, take me away!” She cried into the night. Before Humphrey could stop her, she had crashed through the third story window, toppling ass over teacup into the smoldering haystack below and the waiting arms of her lover, Calgon of Macedonia.

Calgon clutched her tiny face between his thick square man-paws that reeked of cube steak, manure, and the forbidden passions promised by Aqua Velva. “Did you get them, my love?”

“Here,” She said. “It cost me my fortune, my virtue, and my leg. But by god Calgon, I’ve got them!”

Calgon’s chest hair began to grow.

“Show them to me. At once!” He snatched the stained rumpled parchment from Ragina’s trembling paraffin spackled hand. “Dear God,” he said. “It’s worse than we thought…”

It looks a bit like the Big Dipper's bent cousin, Larry Dipper.

One week down! Looking at my weight fluctuation over the last seven days there is a strange dip on the second day followed by a steady increase over the rest of the week, leveling off around the weekend. I don’t know what could have caused the dip. It may be that that I was weighing myself at different times on different days, and sometimes it would occur before or after one of the life processes had taken places. You know the ones I’m talking about. Food goes in, food comes out. You get my drift.

I am talking about poop.

This Week’s Weight:

Monday: 177.7 pounds
Tuesday: 173.9 pounds
Wednesday: 174.4 pounds
Thursday: 175.9 pounds
Friday: 176.6 pounds
Saturday: 177.5 pounds
Sunday: 176.6 pounds

This is the Big Dipper's lazy Aunt Layabout Linda Dipper

BMI tells a less dramatic tale. Instead of the emotional rollercoaster of the weight chart, here we see a gentle dip rather than an abrupt crash. If only the economy could have been measured in BMI rather than Dow Jones. Who knows, perhaps it can?

This Week’s BMI:

Monday: 26.93
Tuesday: 26.36
Wednesday: 26.43
Thursday: 26.66
Friday: 26.76
Saturday: 26.77
Sunday: 26.76

Why didn't you tell me this earlier?

You may recall that jumped through a few hoops to calculate a goal weight using infallible data from such reputable sources as insurance companies, the military, and dubious no-name websites. It turns out that all this time the Wii balance board has been keeping something from me. She had an ideal weight in mind the whole time! It’s a bit like melting Wicked Witch of the West and finding out you could have gone back to Kansas any time you wanted to. In fact, it is that. It is that very thing.

You may recall that the target weight I came up with was 149.58. Now here’s the Wii telling me I should actually be shooting for 145.1. Well, that’s a fine how do you do. I plan to stick with my initial goal for this project. I think the Wii’s suggestion may be overly ambitious for 90 days.

As much as I resent Wii Fit’s cagey passive aggressive way of doling out the information, I do appreciate having it. It is a useful data point, and a goal to consider when the 90 days is all wrapped up.

That is kind of a lot. Could we maybe do it with less? No? Crumbs.

Another little smackerel of information that would have been nice to have earlier. This doesn’t really change anything, but it is handy to have some unit of conversion between weight and BMI. Unfortunate that my conversion factor should be so similar to the sign of the beast, but you takes what you can gets.

Measurements

To my surprise, some of my measurements shifted this week by a quarter inch to a full inch. I wasn’t expecting to see a change, since my overall weight is pretty much the same as it was at the beginning of the week. The only thing I can attribute it to is the whims of fluids inside my body under the thrall of moon’s terrible gravity. Or, it may just be that I’m measuring at a slightly different time of day, or a slightly different spot than I did last time. If a measurement didn’t match up I retook at a few times. These are the results, accurate to my capacity for precision :

Height: 68″ (=)
Head: 22.5″ (=)
Neck: 15.5″ (+)
Shoulders: 44″ (+)
Chest: 37″ (=)
Bicep: 11.75″ (-)
Elbow: 10.75″ (+)
Wrist: 6.75″ (-)
Belly: 35.5″ (-)
Waist: 36.5″ (+)
Butt: 39.5″ (-)
Thight: 22″ (=)
Knee: 15″ (=)
Calf: 15.25″ (-)

New Stat-Tasticks!

I’m going to be throwing in a few additional stats at no extra charge!

Body Fat % Measured by Calipers

First off is body fat measured with calipers as opposed to the scale. Some sites claim this is more accurate than the bioelectric impedance scale. I’m not sure my results will be much better since the calipers require some degree of judgment to pick the right spot to measure. As I’m not trained to use them, I’m not sure if I’m getting the correct measurement. But, the result that they came up with is pretty similar to what I’ve been getting from the scale, so I’m going to assume that they’re in the ball park.

Body Fat % Measured by Calipers: 22.1%

Resting Heart Rate

Resting heart rate is useful for finding your target heart rate – the rate you want to get your heart up to during aerobic exercise to give it a good workout without overdoing it. It’s also something of an indicator of fitness. People who are more fit typically have a lower resting heart rate. I really don’t know if this will change much over the course of the project, but I figured it was a useful data point so I’d include it in the weekly tracker.

Resting Heart Rate: 63 beats per minute

Fitness Benchmarks

These fitness benchmarks are a few common exercises repeated until I’m no longer able to do them with proper form, or doing so becomes not just strenuous, but painful. Theoretically as I lose fat and hopefully replace it with some muscle these numbers will improve. I was actually surprised by how many crunches and squats I was able to do. It seems I have more lower body and core strength than upper body. Not surprising since I actually do walk a fair amount, but hardly ever do any lifting or carrying of heavy stuff.

Max Push Ups: 16
Max Crunches: 90
Max Squats: 60
Max Chin Ups: 0

This Week’s Doughy Photo!

July 20th 2009 Progress - or lack thereof - This is an outfit a retired Spiderman may wear in Boca

In defiance of normal pregnancy procedure the food fetus has gotten no larger over the past week. It must have settled into a comfortable size and shape. It hasn’t been kicking as much either. These swim trunks were discarded by a citizen of taste sometime around 2001 and scavenged with the thought that one day they would prove useful. Well my friends, that day has arrived.