I measure my weight ...

ug. Flying is boring followed by a relief the boredom is going to end.

Congratulations on your accomplishment and thanks for sharing!

-- MyLongNickName

I am relieved at how that story went. I was sure you were going to say you were to heavy for the plane to take off. Anyhow, congrats on the weight loss and the flying.

My life story is similar, in that I ate like a pig in my 20s and 30s while staying skinny as a rake (75kg or thereabouts). After 40, however, something appeared to change in my metabolism or lifestyle, and I started adding weight without notably changing my diet. When it reached 100kg, I decided to turn it around, and now it's down to 85kg and I still plan on dropping it a little. Although I get a fair amount of exercise, the weight loss is not through exercise - it's just by eating less. I strongly suspect you don't lose much weight just by exercise alone (although it may give you a better fat/muscle ratio). My meals are slightly smaller, there's no snacking between meals (other than a carrot or similar), and I occasionally skip a meal without padding other meals. The take-away message is to eat less.

And I wouldn't be surprised if your blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides were all within norm.

Being thin is MUCH more than vanity.

I have the apposite problem - I can be obese and still look "normal". When I gain weight, it's evenly distributed. And when I say I need to lose weight, folks think I have some sort of eating disorder. It's pisses me off, but I just say that my doctor says so - and she does.

And that's the other thing, we've all gotten so heavy that fat people look normal now and folks who are actually what they should weigh are considered "skinny". And don't me started on the studies about BMI being "wrong". It's a great approximation and only your doctor can tell you if you should ignore it.

I can't tell you how many times my workout buddies with their huge guts talked about that study and pointed to their skinny arms and big gut and proclaimed, "BMI doesn't apply to me!" - just because they swim or run a couple of hours a week.

Interesting story, especially the part about where you say "I'm not fat. Who me?" You should be modded "Inspirational".

I worked out 3 hours/day in high school, a mix of swimming, water polo, and weight training. In general I was in great shape. College rolled around and I ate like I did in high school sans the working out. Got married relatively young to someone i started dating when i was 20, but it was a bad relationship and I was too dumb to admit it. The stress, bad habits and bad eating meant that when I look at those wedding photos I'm stunned, I was 226 lbs when I weighed 172 in high school. But the shocking thing to me was when I look back on my mindset at the time, it was exactly that: I could lose a few pounds, but I'm not fat.

THe relationship went south and I got divorced, and I decided that instead of drowning my sorrow in alcohol, I chose to channel my sadness into positive things. Went back to school (nearly finished a Masters), enhanced my career, but most importantly went to a physical trainer. He had me eating better and working out every day; in 8 weeks I dropped 25 lbs. No diet, no nothing, just calorie watching, healthier eating, and exercise every day. I stopped going to him but continued the habits, I'm now down to nearly the weight I was in high school, about 174-175. My goal next year is to get into the 160s. I also realize I'm fortunate; I hit my peak weight at 26; i dropped all that weight between 29 and 32, so hopefully I'll have the right habits going into my 40's when my body really starts changing.

It's fascinating really. When you're overweight you enver think "I"m fat". You always justify it. But now I try to imagine what putting that weight back on me. THat would be teh same as putting a harness over my shoulders and adding 4 bowling balls to carry around with me wherever I go. When put that way, it doesn't sound so good.

Congrats to you, especially as someone who has been through the same thing as you (also I am a flying enthusiast too; sail plane mostly)!

Who says you have to have your clothes on? :D

Go go pilot!
And a female too.
Props....pun intended.

I got a few months of GI Bill left since my graduation few years ago. Been tempted to use it on starting my own flight training. Always wanted to fly. Love all aircraft. Someday when Im not so broke maybe.

Good on you! I got my US cert more than 15 years ago. Got one in New Zealand soon after.

Missing option: "so that the weight x weighting frequency is constant" (as in "the more obese one is, the less frequent the weight checks are").

And thus a new derived measure unit is born: "peace of mind weightage" = "the ratio between the weight of a standard human being measured in Earth's gravitational field at the sea level and the period of 1 Earth year between weight checks" - approximately equal with 27 microN/s

Many (some?) British people would use stones for body weight; the rest would use kilograms. I've never seen anything except human body weight measured in stones.

Americans use pounds.

I measure my weight... Never.

My mass, on the other hand, I measure on a balance scale monthy-ish.

You're doing the wrong way then. Being a force on an object due to gravity, weight should be measured in Newtons.

It is a rather meaningless number in the end of the day. In general, it doesn't take a scale to judge one's health, relative obeseness, etc. Weighing yourself isn't always that useful.

Someone please mod that up! Doctors usually know nothing about how to loose weight, and the recomendation to cut fats mostly lead to failure

I decided to learn human biochemistry directly

Any good learning material that you can point us to?

I think that you need to explain it to her....

Because scales measure weight not mass. Although they are calibrated to display calculated mass, assuming Earth gravity, very few of us have the means to measure our mass directly.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Specifically, when you step on a scale, you measure weight. To your measure mass, you'd need to do something like smack yourself with an object of known mass and velocity and measure how your velocity changes as a result, which is both difficult and dangerous.