Category: Body Challenge

The Golden Ratio and the Quest for the Perfect Body

The perfect body?

This is the kind of body I’m working towards, but without the douche leather wrist straps. In my mind, this is the ideal body, the perfect body. Muscular, lean, fit, healthy.

Is this the perfect body? What is the perfect body? Is it attainable? While physical attraction is subjective and based on personal preference and cultural influence, one thing that most people universally agree on, is that the appearance of the golden ratio in many examples of nature adds an intrinsic beauty.

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Hold a Handstand for One Minute

Part of my 100 Things Challenge:

Handstand. Photo by phoosh.

When I was younger, for a brief period in my teens, I was a competitive gymnast. Part of my whole kick about getting shape is about feeling vibrant and athletic again. I loved gymnastics (and before you ask, my best events were floor, rings and vault) and loved having the ability to do five back handsprings in a row and finish off with a back tuck.

This challenge is a little more tame — hold a handstand for one minute– but will require a lot of practice, muscle and balance.  I expect I won’t even be able to hold a proper handstand for a few seconds until late spring.

Tag: Handstand

The Right Scale for the Job

After I dropped the first 50 pounds, I started to shift my focus from weight reduction to body fat reduction. My current body fat percentage is about 27%. If you’ve seen my 100 Things Challenge for 2012, then you’ll know one of my goals is to get down to 9% body fat. Shit.

The cool, glass IKEA scale I was using is no longer good enough. It was great for simple weight reduction monitoring, but if I was going to start monitoring my body fat percentage, I was going to need something a little more industrial strength. I needed a scale with biometric impedance analysis.

Since I am an avid iPad, iPhone and Internet user, I went with the Withings WiFi Body Scale. This thing kicks ass! Not only does it have biometric impedance analysis to monitor my lean mass and fat mass, but it connects through my router and reports back to a website that tracks my results, where I can access them via a website, or via free apps on my iPhone and iPad. (Withings also makes a blood pressure monitor that connects to the devices and stores your BP results.)

So, while I haven’t really dropped a pound since the first of the month, my body fat percentage has dropped by about 3% already.

A Note About Body Mass Index (BMI)

According to my Body Mass Index (BMI), which was 37 on my initial start date Aug. 22, 2011, I was listed in the category of Obese Class II (BMI of 35-39.99). While BMI is not exact, it is a fairly accurate indicator for an average guy like myself. Body fat percentage is a much better gauge.

Since a bodybuilder with less than nine per cent body fat can have a BMI greater than 25, he might be categorized as overweight, BMI is not reliable as a sole measure. It’s a great start, but depending on what your focus is in your personal body structuring plan, you should pair it with measurements of weight and body fat percentage. I bought a Withings Body Scale to do just that.

Here’s a fancy chart that shows the BMI zones:

Body Mass Index Chart

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The First 50 Pounds

They say the last 10 pounds are the toughest to lose, and they would be correct. That’s because when you get down to the last 10 pounds and do a bunch of cardio, maybe some weight training, you are actually changing your body composition, building dense muscle and replacing less dense fat tissue.

I don’t know for sure, but when I weighed 250 pounds, my body composition was somewhere around 40-45 per cent fat. INSANE! Almost half of my entire weight was just fat! Ugh. When there’s that much fat on your body, weight reduction is easy. I would say 90 per cent of my first 50 pounds was all dietary, maybe more.

On Aug. 22, 2011, my BMI was 37; I was in the category of “Obese Class II.” While BMI is not exact, it is a fairly accurate starting point. For months leading up to this start date, I did a lot of reading. After reading Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes and The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss, I started digging into the science a little further.

While both books do a great job of helping you understand the science of your body, I found Taubes to be too academic and Ferriss to be too much of an experimenter. When I teach improv, I tell my students to constantly seek understanding; I wanted understanding, I wanted to arm myself with knowledge, with science.

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