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About six years ago I posted a fitness update (itself the first one after a long gap) - the title was "The numbers look bad, but I look fine". The numbers in question being:
( ... behind a cut, in case people don't want the details ... )
The 'measurements' I actually care about the most are:
1. Do I feel good today?
Bit nebulous, but I am daily aware that I feel my age more now than I did when I was fitter - although also, that was ~8 years ago, so there's more age to feel! Still, I am pretty sure that if I were fitter again, I'd be feeling those years a lot less when I did simple stuff like crouch down to pick the cat up or whatever.
I think goal one of starting to do weights and hopefully other exercise again is simply to feel like I can cope with day to day life without grunting involuntarily every time I exert myself the slightest amount :)
2. Can I do cool stuff?
This is mostly about parkour movements (not that I've been out to play more than once or twice in the last 3 years), and the answer is currently mostly 'no'. Acrobatics also figures in here, but it's been even longer since I tried a somersault. Partially practice would help with being able to say 'yes' to this one, but reinstating a basic level of strength would certainly be reassuring, probably sensible, and possibly essential if I don't want to injure myself doing something that five years ago would have seemed trivial.
3. Do I look good today?
Vanity started this journey for me, and I will always defend it as a valid and 'worthy' motivation for people to choose to get fitter :)
I do think I look okay currently, as it happens, although that's partly because I'm relatively lean and like most people I score that too highly when assessing looks. Once my brain kicks in a bit more I note that I'm nowhere near as muscled as I used to be - I'd like to restore at least some of that muscle before I'm happier answering 'yes' to this question without qualifiers.
4. Am I strong enough to be useful?
One of the mottos of the people who developed parkour as a discipline was 'be strong to be useful', and I think it's a nice guideline to aim for. Can you carry your shopping home without hurting yourself, no matter what you choose to buy? Or a real example from back when I was strong enough to be useful; can you carry your friend to the car if she can't walk right now? I was pleased to be able to do that back then, and I doubt I would do it so confidently now. I'd like to be approximately that strong, and that useful, again. I don't need to be much stronger than that, to my mind, and just piling up bigger numbers on the weights for their own sake doesn't appeal to me (any more) as a motivation.
It'd be nice to claim these four questions were all I care about, but I am a geek and of course I want to reduce problems to nice simple quantifiable measurements and then keep score :-P
So, of the numbers my scales give me, the ones I care about (in order of how much I care), are:
1. Muscle percentage
2. Body fat
3. Visceral fat
4. Weight
5. Estimated age
1 is pretty simple - the more of me that is muscle, the more cool stuff I can do with my body, and the more likely it is that I am strong enough to be useful, etc :)
2 and 3 are almost a tie - body fat is slightly ahead because I'm vain, and also because the less of it I'm carrying around, the more cool stuff I can do with my body (higher power to weight ratio ftw). However, as I understand it visceral fat correlates pretty strongly with health outcomes; I'm old enough to care about that shit now, especially since my dad's heart attack. I suspect these two will swap places for me at some point in the next few years.
The fact that I care about 4 annoys me, I'm occasionally even tempted to stop tracking it, but much like BMI it is a useful rough proxy for various other things (notably, 'do I look good') and so on the list it stays for now. I might stop listing it first though, to fight the precedence that both scales and society give it ;)
(I have now gone back and demoted 'weight' in the stats boxes) :)
And finally, while I am fully aware that 5 is the most bullshit stat of the many dubious stats that fall out of my scales, it's still hard not to feel a bit miffed when it's higher than your actual age as it was six years ago! Or to feel quietly smug when it's 12 years below your actual age, like today. But again - I know I was stronger and more capable then than I am now. So, not too smug, eh?
I've just been reading a few articles on 'getting back into weights/exercise/fitness after a few years away' and they all had the same obvious advice - don't rush it. Sadly there were no magic shortcuts to be found, not entirely to my surprise. But most of them did also say that if you're sensible and just work at it steadily, it's quicker to get back to where you were than it was to get there the first time, even if you're starting from the same place again.
Hopefully I'll find out this year.
( ... behind a cut, in case people don't want the details ... )The 'measurements' I actually care about the most are:
1. Do I feel good today?
Bit nebulous, but I am daily aware that I feel my age more now than I did when I was fitter - although also, that was ~8 years ago, so there's more age to feel! Still, I am pretty sure that if I were fitter again, I'd be feeling those years a lot less when I did simple stuff like crouch down to pick the cat up or whatever.
I think goal one of starting to do weights and hopefully other exercise again is simply to feel like I can cope with day to day life without grunting involuntarily every time I exert myself the slightest amount :)
2. Can I do cool stuff?
This is mostly about parkour movements (not that I've been out to play more than once or twice in the last 3 years), and the answer is currently mostly 'no'. Acrobatics also figures in here, but it's been even longer since I tried a somersault. Partially practice would help with being able to say 'yes' to this one, but reinstating a basic level of strength would certainly be reassuring, probably sensible, and possibly essential if I don't want to injure myself doing something that five years ago would have seemed trivial.
3. Do I look good today?
Vanity started this journey for me, and I will always defend it as a valid and 'worthy' motivation for people to choose to get fitter :)
I do think I look okay currently, as it happens, although that's partly because I'm relatively lean and like most people I score that too highly when assessing looks. Once my brain kicks in a bit more I note that I'm nowhere near as muscled as I used to be - I'd like to restore at least some of that muscle before I'm happier answering 'yes' to this question without qualifiers.
4. Am I strong enough to be useful?
One of the mottos of the people who developed parkour as a discipline was 'be strong to be useful', and I think it's a nice guideline to aim for. Can you carry your shopping home without hurting yourself, no matter what you choose to buy? Or a real example from back when I was strong enough to be useful; can you carry your friend to the car if she can't walk right now? I was pleased to be able to do that back then, and I doubt I would do it so confidently now. I'd like to be approximately that strong, and that useful, again. I don't need to be much stronger than that, to my mind, and just piling up bigger numbers on the weights for their own sake doesn't appeal to me (any more) as a motivation.
It'd be nice to claim these four questions were all I care about, but I am a geek and of course I want to reduce problems to nice simple quantifiable measurements and then keep score :-P
So, of the numbers my scales give me, the ones I care about (in order of how much I care), are:
1. Muscle percentage
2. Body fat
3. Visceral fat
4. Weight
5. Estimated age
1 is pretty simple - the more of me that is muscle, the more cool stuff I can do with my body, and the more likely it is that I am strong enough to be useful, etc :)
2 and 3 are almost a tie - body fat is slightly ahead because I'm vain, and also because the less of it I'm carrying around, the more cool stuff I can do with my body (higher power to weight ratio ftw). However, as I understand it visceral fat correlates pretty strongly with health outcomes; I'm old enough to care about that shit now, especially since my dad's heart attack. I suspect these two will swap places for me at some point in the next few years.
The fact that I care about 4 annoys me, I'm occasionally even tempted to stop tracking it, but much like BMI it is a useful rough proxy for various other things (notably, 'do I look good') and so on the list it stays for now. I might stop listing it first though, to fight the precedence that both scales and society give it ;)
(I have now gone back and demoted 'weight' in the stats boxes) :)
And finally, while I am fully aware that 5 is the most bullshit stat of the many dubious stats that fall out of my scales, it's still hard not to feel a bit miffed when it's higher than your actual age as it was six years ago! Or to feel quietly smug when it's 12 years below your actual age, like today. But again - I know I was stronger and more capable then than I am now. So, not too smug, eh?
I've just been reading a few articles on 'getting back into weights/exercise/fitness after a few years away' and they all had the same obvious advice - don't rush it. Sadly there were no magic shortcuts to be found, not entirely to my surprise. But most of them did also say that if you're sensible and just work at it steadily, it's quicker to get back to where you were than it was to get there the first time, even if you're starting from the same place again.
Hopefully I'll find out this year.
