Fat Club - Friday 23rd

Good morning everyone,

I'm having a rest day today with no running or gym or riding - but loads of gardening (and that counts as exercise, believe me!).

Good luck to everyone weighing-in today.
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Comments

  • Hi RH - I've got a 6+ miler this evening, but i need it after leaving do last night at a mexican place, all those nachos!!!
  • Nothing to declare apart from waking up at 3am wishing it was time for breakfast. And that was despite a no-running, mega-eating day yesterday.
  • Hiya joining in the fat club if thats ok, 5'10 and weigh 73.7Kg hoping to get down to 69Kg using the Nike 10K and healthy eating.
    Hoping to get to the gym at lunch time and do 4K running (not a long way for you lot but I will be a sweating collapsed heap by the end!)

    Good luck to all you who are wieghing in today.

    *goes off to get huge bowl of porridge*

  • hmm well it wasn't always that way, in February I found myself tipping the scales at 85Kg. Just increased my cardio work in the gym (my main thing in the gym is weights which I adore doing) and started watching what I ate. I've been on a plateau for about 2 months now tho so am hoping running will kick start things again.
  • Well done so far, Gemini! Losing the first 5% of your weight is enough to give you huge long-term health benefits, and by my abacus you've more than exceeded that and are already well within the "normal" range for your height (I really, really wish I was 5'10"!). But you know what's a comfortable weight for you. Best of luck with those last few pounds.

    I'm unlikely to run more than 4K today either, and if I'm not shirt-wringingly sweaty by the end of it I shall be seriously disappointed.
  • Actaully its quite interesting, I went to one of these health farm places for a day beginning of February and they did various tests for body fat V20 Max etc. Now they said I was overweight and that I should aim to be between 74Kg and 78Kg.
    Now in April having lost the weight and getting down to 75Kg I went to my normal gym and had all the tests done again and they said I should be between 69Kg and 72Kg!!!
    Not really worried about my weight but my last body fat % test was 27% which is a bit high.
  • Morning Team!
    I posted a thread on the General site - Belly's Gonna Get Ya!- and I was advised to take a look at The Fat Club. So here I am.
    If you check the thread out you will get the general idea.In short I am 41, 5'10 ex-rugby player, around 15st (lost 2st through running GNR & FLM 2002. I need to loose more gut (entered the 2003 FLM) but seemed to have reached a plateau. I run about 30 miles pw. (2x 3miles a day)at an average 9-10 min mile.The tyre will not move!I know I'm not fast (not built for speed)but can plod out the miles quite happyly. I think the diet is OK although the odd beer/wine might slip down at the weekend.
    Any advice will be gladly recevied.
    Cheers in advance!
    Kev H
    "Belly's gonna get ya!- I am the Belly"

  • "I think the diet is ok"
    This might be your problem, it mught be worth looking more closely at your diet and looking at all the hidden fats you may be eating without realising it (i.e. butter on sandwiches)
  • Morning all,

    I have no idea what my body fat is.. and to be honest I would rather not, I'll stick with v-raps wobble test, and I'm wobbling !!
    I have always had problems shifting the lower tummy fat.. anyone got a fool proof exercise for this ?. I have been down to 8.5 stone, and still the tummy wobbles, although you can feel the muscle underneath. What a lovley picture !!! Today my leg is sorer than yesterday, all drying out and scabing over yukk .. but managed an easy run last night. It was so warm I flung caution and the T-shirt to the wind and ran home in my lycra shorts & top, ohh the pain of holding my tummy in for 2 miles... lol.
    As for height and weight, I am 5'7, and 65 kg, I think I am just outside my range.

  • RedheadRedhead ✭✭✭
    Welcome Gemini (I'm one too!) and congrats on the weight loss. I hate it when separate sources tell you different ideal weights and I think you've got the right attitude - ie draw your own conclusions and do what feels right.

    Kev - what can I say...belly's got my hubby too...so we sympathise. I put poor hubby on a diet and he dutifully lost 1.5 stones, but none of it from his belly (well it didn't seem to have come off there)! Hubby knows that the only way he's going to shift the rest is by more exercise but in your case you seem to be doing loads. Maybe you should re-examine your diet as Gemini said and perhaps introduce more fruit and veg etc etc? Good luck and let us know how it goes.


  • RedheadRedhead ✭✭✭
    Sorry Daisy, didn't see your post.

    Don't talk to me about the lower tummy fat - even when I was thin as a lath I still had a pudgy little belly wobbling around on top of the muscles! Please, if anyone knows how to shift it (without liposuction), share your secret with us.

  • Hi Kev, welcome to Fat Club. I know what you mean about the spare tyre. I've lost 2 1/2 stone in the last 18 months and am running to get fit, keep of the fags, and lose some more weight. In GNR training at the moment, so legs look fantastic, but tummy as wobbly as ever. I have no idea how to lose it, even at my most svelte, I still had a belly. I've been doing plenty abds exercises to keep them toned, but it makes not difference to the tummy flab. Apart from liposuction, which is ruled out on the basis of only mad people do that kind of nonsense, its a case of keeping up with the exercise and the low fat diet. At some point it must go, but at then end of the day, there is nothing wrong with a bit of cuddly tum in my book.
  • Gemini, whether a body fat of 27% is high or not depends on whether or not you've got a Y chromosome - if you're a girl, it's well within the normal range, although you'd have to halve it if you wanted to join the Paula Radcliffe league. It also depends on how it was measured - one of the Fat Club threads from earlier this week includes a discussion of ways of measuring body fat (I recommend throwing away the machines and calipers and jumping up and down in front of the mirror wearing nothing but a bra).

    Redhead, women are SUPPOSED to have little bellies. The fat to worry about is the stuff that's tucked away under your abdominal muscles where you can't see it. That's what carries the heart disease and diabetes risk and why the male G.U.T. really is worth tackling. My husband's got one too - he says it's not and it's just the result of having an exaggerated spinal curve, which may be partly true as he's only a little overweight.

    Kev, your diet sounds amazingly restrained. With that sort of food intake, even if your portions are generous, and your level of exercise, I'd expect a 15-stone man to be losing weight. Could there be a little bit of "invisible food" that you're not counting? It's genuinely very easy to forget the odd packet of salted peanuts eaten while watching television, or Mars bar stuffed down in a hurry because you're starving. And we all know that there are no calories in the squashed biscuits at the ends of a packet of digestives, or the piece of cake that you're only eating because it's someone's birthday.

  • Hi Kev,

    Well my big guy is 6'3 and around the 20st mark... he know's he is way overweight, he has recently started to come out on the bike when I am running, and I hope to eventually introduce him to a walk/run easy programme. He seems more willing to do this than diet, although he has cut back on a lot of junk food and half his beer intake. He always said the belly on the advert was his, and funnily enough so did I ...
  • RedheadRedhead ✭✭✭
    Velociraptor, Thanks. I'll have to learn to love my belly!!! How do you know if you've got hidden fat (I suspect that mine's all on show to maximise my embarrassment.
  • velociraptor - I was told my body fat as a female should be between 20-26%.
    And if I jump up and down in front of the mirror it does wobble :)
  • Hi team!
    Thanks for the reponse so far.
    V.Rap re your last point, I wish it was as easy as forgetting the odd Mars bar and the like at least then I could pin point the problem and eradicate it! (Un)fortunately I
    dont have a sweet tooth or fill up on biscuits.I also do the low fat melarkey on spreads & milk. To be honest, there are two areas that could be the 'achillies heel'
    1. Amount consumed in the evening (2nd helping of pasta..)
    2.No runs at the weekend and the diet not as restricted as during the week especially with a treat of a swig or 2...(otherwise life would be totally boring)
    What do you think?
    Cheers!
    Kev H
    (It's Friday, I feel a Beck's coming on. Be gone Satan....where's the opener)
  • RedheadRedhead ✭✭✭
    Hey Kev, You can't be Billy Boring at the weekend too and everyone deserves treats sometimes - just make sure they are treats and not the norm!

    Have you tried any speedwork, like 'intervals' or 'fartlek' in your runs? Maybe that would get you going.
  • Was just trying on some stuff in M&S and I am SURE they have false mirrors in there, my thighs are not that slender!! What a conm you buy them thinking you look fab but actually you look likean overstuffed haggis! BTW, is it possible to have muscly legs and slender ones, I have noticeable hams and quads and they seem to be too chunky for my usual size trousers... Will that be OK once I lose fat or am I doomed to be thunder thighs?!
  • Hi Lamb. You seem to visit M&S rather a lot, was it a lunchtime treat? M&S do seem to have played about with their sizes recently. Of course you can have skinny legs which are muscly, you just need to die and be reincarnated as Paula Radcliffe! Someone once said to me that I must remember that not one person is the same size and shape as another, so even if you like the look of the trousers on the hanger they might not look good on you no matter how big or little you are, if they ain't cut for your shape, height and size they won't look good. The mirrors thing is an illusion to make you buy stuff you will never wear - b******s!
  • M&S do long length trousers, hence my frequent visits (I am sure you know all about the difficulty of finding trousers that don't make you look like a complete school spanner!)
    The trousers did look good, but who knows the true horror as i was there alone, no friend to tell me I actually looked awful! They are boot cut and pinstripe, which bodes well for flattering-ness and I have just got a pair of killer boots so watch out boys!
    Thing about Paula and all those distance runners is that they have very lean muscle whereas I seem to put on sprinter's muscle, I think it;s a hangover from my footballing days!
  • GlennGlenn ✭✭✭
    I look awful in the mirrors at M&S. Heaven knows how bad I look in real life.

    Talking of M&S, have you ever noticed how much fat there is in some of their salads? B******s indeed.
  • Ah yes, I know what you mean Lamb, I need those longer length trousers too. Boot cut trousers are normally very flattering on us chubsters. I don't find trousers too bad, Gap do nice work ones and I've found the odd long pair in Oasis.

    Glenn, I agree, I was in there the other day and couldn't believe how much fat was in what looked like a healthy pasta salad.
  • Gemini, you have been told wrong. The normal body fat range for a woman is 20-35%. That's right, you can be the same composition as a lump of cheddar cheese and still be normal. So you're bang on the middle of the range at present.

    Redhead, measure round your tummy (at the level of your bellybutton, not at the waist bit that you can suck in) and around your hips. If the tummy measurement is more than 80% of the hip measurement, you probably have enough fat inside your abdomen to worry about. If not, congratulations and welcome to the ranks of the healthy pears. An even easier way is just to take the tummy measurement and relax if it's less than 80cm (32").

    Kev, apologies for casting aspersions on your memory. I'd second the advice to get stuck into some intervals and fartleks. If you can get your speed up, you'll be able to run further (and therefore burn off more calories) in a given time, you'll run more comfortably in your fat-burning zone, and the afterburn - the increase in your metabolic rate that persists after the end of exercise - is bigger after intensive exercise. Part of the joy of running should be the ability to eat healthily but plentifully without worrying about our weight!

    I have the opposite trouser problem to you, Lamb, since I'm only 5'1". M&S short length are about right, but since they revamped their sizes I find that the size that fits my bum and legs has about 6 inches more waistband than I need, a bit like men's trousers. I've got sprinter's muscles too, and put it down to years of cycling but suspect it's just genetics even if, looking at my parents and their families, that means my father was the milkman.

    One of the instructors at the gym has me gaping - she hasn't a muscle (or an ounce of fat) in sight, doesn't do aerobic exercise, yet squats with 30kg on the bar without breaking sweat.
  • Hi all,

    My first Fat Club post after being inspired by all the messages that I've read on this and other threads. I'm going to start running properly with a schedule etc. from today. I've just weighed myself: 12st 5lbs, I am 5'8" tall and female. How do I find out what my ideal weight is, is there a chart somewhere?

    Does anyone have advice on how to stop from getting anaemic whilst doing a fair amount of exercise? My doctor says that I should take ferrous sulphate every day but I don't feel too happy doing that. I've just started taking Floradix Floravital instead.

    I'm going out for a run with my son in a moment, and I won't worry if I have to stop to walk for a bit.

  • RedheadRedhead ✭✭✭
    Fat Redhead alert, Fat Redhead alert,

    Oh, oh, V-Rap - it worked out at 83% and I've got a low-slung belly button, not one of those just under the boobs ones like Geri Halliwell. Does that mean I've got loads of yukky fat hiding behind there?
  • Hello all. I thought it was time I joined in. I'm 5'3 and 10 stone, so would like to lose 1 - 1.5 stone, but am trying hard to focus on body shape not weight.

    Ran last night for 23 minutes (meandering around the roads having a wee explore), then this morning for 27.34 on my usual out and back up to the Long Walk in Windsor - it's about 2.5 miles I think, but am very smug today, as that is a pb, having knocked about 50 seconds off my usual pace.

    Thanks for all sharing so much - you are very inspirational!

    :-) Kiwi
  • Gemini, maybe you were confusing %fat with BMI? I think the top recommended BMI for women is about 25...??
  • Hi Guys!

    I'm a begginer runner (plodder) and have just (foolishly!) been persuaded by a friend to apply for the marathon. I'm quite overweight, so need to loose weight to make the big day easier and hope to do so by starting my training (went out last night for 45 mins - though could probably have walked faster than I ran!)

    It's great to be able to read all your comments - hopefully it will help keep me going over the next 8 months!

    Have a great weekend!

    K
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