What’s Your Ideal Body Weight?

Over at FatBloggers, Rick made a post about finding your BMI that set off a flurry of comments on its lunacy. This is the system that says that I should weigh around 189 lbs. That sounds awesome, I mean, college studs weigh 189 lbs! But I know that several years ago I had my body fat percentage taken with one of those fancy electrical impedance machines and it told me that my lean body weight (skin, bone, muscle and organs) weigh in at OVER 200lbs. So I went looking for some sanity, and I think I found it. In surfing around the net tonight, I found a site that I feel points the average Guy (or Gal) on a Diet in a more sane direction.

The Better Ideal Body Weight Calculator takes your height, weight, age, and gender into account when calculating your ‘ideal’ bodyweight. For the sake of picking a number I had been laboring under the idea that my ‘goal’ weight would be 235 lbs. Why that number? Well, its a nice looking number. That and the fact that when my brother-in-law is in his ‘fighting shape’ he weighs in at 235 and looks pretty good.

After feeding my info into the Ideal Bodyweight Calculator, it spat out the number 263! Hmm… that sounds awfully high. What do you think? Because I’m not sure. I have been obese my entire adult life, so I’m not sure if 263 will look good on me.

If we go back to the Body Mass Index, my current BMI is 46.3 (it was 51.7 when I started WeightWatchers last December). When I plug in 263, I get 34.7, and guess what, anything over 30 is STILL obese! As I posed in the comment on Rick’s post, even the incredible LaDainian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers is OBESE. At 5′10″ and 221 lbs, his BMI is 31.6!

Damn, I would like to be FAT like LT!