One way to decide how much excess weight I am carrying is to use one of the MeasureUp paper tape measures to measure my waistline.
The waistline measurement is obviously not the only measure of overweight but it is an important one because it is the ‘most dangerous one’.
I’ve got a big supply of the MeasureUp tapemeasures to give away.
In the meanwhile while they are sitting around my house I’ve gradually got them all over the place and find I am measuring my waistline several times a day.
It goes up and down but trending down very definitely with this goal of Swap It Don’t Stop It and also the goal of Let’s All Lose 10% Of Our Excess Weight.
The only “trouble” is that I have already lost well over 10% on the waist measure.
The MeasureUp tape measures have two sides (Women Men). They have a Green (Healthy Range) section then an Amber (Risk Range) section then a Red (High Risk Range) section for each gender.
I started off in the High Risk Range at a (mere!!!!) 30cm above the top end of the Healthy Range.
So the question of how overweight I am could be answered as 30cm. That is one way of thinking about it.
Then the Let’s All Lose 10% Of Our Excess Weight approach would mean that my goal is to lose 3cm (so I would be Down to “only” 27cm excess!)
The truth is this isn’t much and I have already well and truly achieved that. However if everyone in this community did the same (lost 10% of their excess weight) it would actually make a fantastic difference to our community health.
As I said it goes up and down a bit but the range is trending down. At the moment the most I have got it down is 12cm. It hasn’t come close to the peak again. 12cm is a 40% drop is excess weight on the waistline measurement. This is in about 5 weeks.
Of course using the MeasureUp tape measures my goal has changed. Now I want to get it down below the Red and Amber into the Green.