Knowledge is power so know thyself

In this day of Big Data forming stories and profiles about us, we can use data we collect to do the same. I’ve collected data about my body sizes over the course of a couple of months. I actually thought today marked two months of complete data but it turns out that was actually three days ago. Oh well, I guess I should know thy dates.

That is by the by though and I now have some good data to act as control data.

It’s control data because I haven’t actually changed anything in terms of working out or diet. I have been walking more but I started that before the proper data collection so I don’t want to go backwards.

I actually have three months’ worth of data but a month of that didn’t include all the measurements I now include. In either case I am seeing a change although physically not really noticeable. So here’s what I’m tracking:

• Neck
• Chest
• Waist
• High Hip
• Hip
• Weight
• BMI
• Ponderal Index
• Body Fat
• Lean Body Mass
• Waist to Height
• Waist to Hip

I am using a Numbers spreadsheet and have some interesting results.

There is a noticeable trend downwards in terms of physical dimensions. I am losing fat at a steady pace. It’s not a quick pace but I’m in this for the long run. I don’t want to lose weight too fast because I don’t want the ugly skin flap that comes as a result.

Weight is an interesting one. I’m not seeing too many changes with that. I’m sitting anywhere between 76 and 73 Kgs depending on how much I eat. But the kicker is that I expected that. Weight is a poor measure of how well we’re doing. Not only does it fluctuate but on the BMI side of things a fit healthy body builder – someone we’d associate with physical perfection – is more often than not obese on this scale.

When I first started looking into getting fitter it was December of 2023. The first day I measured my waist I was shocked to see it at 103cm. I know that over winter I tend to put fat on but I was surprised to see it be so much. The thing that made it worse is that for us here in New Zealand, December is the start of our summer so to be that wide at the time that I’m supposed to be the most active was a bit of a wake-up call.

I’m currently at 83cm for my waist which is fascinating to me because it’s starting to back up what I’ve said in a previous post – diets don’t work.

I know that is controversial to many but I made the point that diets all have a proviso that they work when in conjunction with a regular exercise programme. I floated the idea that maybe the diet is doing nothing and that it’s actually the exercise that is causing the weight loss. The data that I have collected seems to be proving me right because I have NOT employed a diet at all in this whole time. I haven’t even really reduced my intake at all either. I certainly haven’t ditched what people would refer to as junk food so their claims that we need to go on diets seems to be a big lie. At least from the data I’m collecting.

Now that I have two months of control data I can start to play with ideas to see if I can make more drastic changes, while still avoiding the skin flap.

So over the next two months I’m going to look at reducing my portion sizes. I know that if I get Mrs Wookie to dish out my food I’m going to break this so I will have to set it myself. I sincerely feel that she’s a big part of why I look like this because she’ll dish out smaller portions for herself and give me the rest. I notice she doesn’t give me big portions of the stuff I love – like meat – it’s always big portions of vegetables. Screw vegetables, they don’t even exist anyway.

So let’s look at the data I’m seeing shall we?

Before we begin we need to look at how I get this data. I have two major tools which are a standard dress making measuring tape. The other tool is a Nintendo Wii with the Wii Fit Board and Wii Fit Plus software. The Wii Fit board is acting as my set of scales. Believe it or not it is really quite accurate as I’ve measured it against other scales.

I used to have a Fitbit Aria but I never trusted that. I could step on it three times and get three different measurements so that seems completely bollocks. Plus we changed our internet provider who supplied and 802.11ac router and the Aria can’t connect to that.

When measuring with the tape I am pulling tight. This might seem like cheating but it’s not. Remember, we’re measuring our birthday suit not an Armani suit. We need to go tight to measure how much fat we have. Sure, it shouldn’t be digging into our body but even if it is, if you’re measuring the same way daily it should still provide a reliable data set.

So now look at the data:

The first screenshot shows when I was just collecting Waist, Hip, and Weight data. It then moves to the Neck, Chest, and High Hip measurements. Neck and chest make sense as to what we’re measuring but High Hip and Hip might not. So here’s where you measure everything.

Waist: Waist is measured from the bottom of your rib cage around. This sits just above your belly button.

High Hip: This is measured from on top of your pelvic bone around. This sits more or less on your belly button.

Hip: This is roughly halfway down your pelvic bone taking in your bum.

For men we don’t really need to measure our Hip per se. Our fat tends to sit around our waist so Waist and High Hip measurements give us a more accurate picture of what’s going on with our bodies. Ladies, High Hip and Hip are where fat tends to build up for you so these measurements are the important ones. That being said, don’t skip any of the measurements because they do provide interesting pictures of how you are shaping.

The second screenshot is calculated data from the previous worksheet. I need to explain the actual weight though.

The Nintendo Wii Fit Plus app allows you to tell it how heavy your clothing is. Most scales however do not. As such I set the Wii to 0 for how heavy my clothing is. On another worksheet I record the weight of my clothing that I’m wearing at the time of measuring myself:

In this screenshot you’ll see on the 17th March and 13th April I had extra clothing on. So if we look at the weight recorded on the Wii I was 75.51 on 17th Mar and 75.4 on 13th Apr. But with the calculations to remove the weight of my clothing I was actually 74.54 and 74.27 respectively.

Yes, I do record the weight of my clothing:

The thing is, we’re trying to weight ourselves so weighing ourselves while dressed is dumb. That being said, people might be self-conscious going starkers so this is a great way to measure ourselves more accurately.

You’ll notice that in all my measurements I’m wearing my dressing gown which weighs 734 grams. However, because we weight ourselves in kilograms I divide by 1000. This is why in the “Current Ensemble” worksheet the total is in decimals.

So we just remove the weight of our clothes from the weight recorded on the scales and we have our actual weight. This has been tested and it is pretty accurate – at least accurate enough to be useable data.

You’ll notice something called “Ponderal Index”. This is being pushed as the replacement for BMI. Either way, it’s a poor metric for measuring how well we are changing. It is supposed to be more accurate for adults but BMI is supposedly more accurate for children so hence the reason both are measured.

I’ll explain the formulas I used in this spreadsheet in another post but all the information I’ve used can be found on Wikipedia among other health based sites.

In the meantime here’s the full data for you to peruse:

As you can see, the data weight data has relatively minor changes. The body dimensions however show a steady decline. The biggest drops have been around my waist and high hips which is pretty much on par with what I’ve read about the male body. Males tend to hold their fat around their waist whereas females tend to hold it around their hips.

What I found interesting with this data is that it seems that I lose the fat from the bottom up. There is a faster drop in fat around my high hip than there is around my waist. My waist then catches up then my high hips lose more, then my waist catches up. That’s a fascinating picture for me.

Now I have all of this initial data I can start to experiment with things. I’ve already proved that moving more is making measurable changes to my body in terms of losing fat. What is going to be interesting is what is going to happen to my body when I reduce my intake. Once again, I’m not going to stop eating what I enjoy, which includes so called junk food. However, I am going to reduce my portion sizes using some visual tricks which I’ll explain in another post.

Here’s to the next two months.