Pierini Fitness: ideal bodyweight

Friday, June 14, 2019

Middle-aged man chatter and white smoke

Pierini Fitness is an analytical fitness dude and likes objective measures to validate what he has accomplished or failed to accomplish. This requires fitness, health and wellness goals that are expressed using a measurement of some type and a way of subsequently measuring results. Anything else, the way he sees it, is middle-aged man chatter and white smoke.

Earlier this year, around the beginning of Spring, he set the following goals to achieve by the first day of Summer 2019 which is a few days around the corner:

(1) Complete 100 pull-ups in 20 minutes.

(2) Complete 100 bar dips in 15 minutes.

(3) Complete a kettlebell (KB) complex using a 24kg KB consisting of 4 rounds of 8 reps each of swing, clean and push jerk with each arm, followed by 100 burpees in 20 minutes.

(4) Enter and complete a 10k fun run and run it at a 9-minute mile pace.

(5) Achieve a body weight of 172 lbs. with a body fat of 18 percent.

Since summer begins next week on June 17^th, Pierini Fitness has decided it’s time to report his results.

Complete 100 pull-ups in 20 minutes

Pierini Fitness chose to do this alternating between pull-ups and chin-ups for a better upper body workout. While it’s true that chin-ups are generally easier than pull-ups, tweaking this goal, in his opinion, didn’t diminish the challenge.

His best time thus far completing 100 reps is 20:40 on June 3^rd. He may, or may not, complete another 100-rep workout by the first day of summer so the 20:40 is his final best result. Therefore, he got close but failed to achieve the 20-minute goal.

Complete 100 bar dips in 15 minutes

This goal was achieved twice with the latest being 100 bar dips completed in 13:46 on June 4^th. Goal accomplished.

Complete a kettlebell complex (described above) in 20 minutes

This goal got “parked” as the demands of running started to take more of his time. It’s a tough goal and one that Pierini Fitness hopes to eventually tackle. Bottom line, goal abandoned and not accomplished.

Enter and complete a 10k fun run and run it at a 9-minute mile pace

As previously reported here at Pierini Fitness, the fun run will be the Wharf to Wharf 6-mile run taking place the last Sunday of July. It’s a run beginning at the Santa Cruz Wharf and ending at the nearby Capitola Wharf. Pierini Fitness is currently training diligently for it with every intention of achieving his goal.

He’ll give a report on how he did by early August.

Achieve a body weight of 172 lbs. with a body fat of 18 percent

Pierini Fitness has weighed in at 172 lbs. or less 31 days since the first time he did so on April 17^th,including yesterday when this was written. He has since better defined his goal weight as between 172 and 177 lbs.

He had a DXA body scan done earlier this week to accurately measure his lean muscle, fat, bone density and visceral fat. It’s a great value service provided by BODYMAP360 and one that he highly recommends. The price he paid of $49 is far less than the valuable information provided.

Pierini Fitness measured at 18.8 percent body fat, slightly over the 18 percent goal, but he’s nonetheless pleased with the results. Since the last test done on April 10^th, his body weight was 0.8 lbs. less but the good news is that he lost 4.1 lbs. of fat while gaining 3.4 lbs. of lean muscle (0.1 lbs. variance due to rounding.)

So, while the goal was not achieved by 0.8 percent, it’s close enough to say that it was.

Working with his cyberspace fitness training partner, Pierini Fitness will be defining the next round of his fitness, health and wellness goals to chase during the summer with a measurement date by the first day of fall in September.

And, he’ll have objective measures to validate what he hopes to accomplish because anything else is middle-aged man chatter and white smoke.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

18 years plus 10 percent

How much should a middle-aged man weigh?

Good question and there’s no shortage of experts and published expert opinions to quickly answer the question. Problem is, nobody asked Pierini Fitness, the self-appointed ambassador of all middle-aged man around the world.

I’ve had my thoughts about this for a long time. I’ve shared them vocally with various middle-aged men but have never shared them here at Pierini Fitness until today.

I recently shared my thoughts at the MyFitnessPal Community, a large discussion forum community of people generally having a common goal of losing weight. I’ve joined this community and use the MyFitnessPal app which I think is outstanding. More about this, perhaps, on a different day.

Anyway, this was a discussion topic post I made there verbatim:

"I haven’t spent much time here but hope to, starting in late February when I’m projected to be at my ideal weight range which I’ll call 177-182 lbs. my single point target weight is 177 lbs. I’m 5’11” in the height department.

It’s based on my belief that, as a middle-aged man (soon to be age 64), my ideal weight is no more than 10 percent higher than what I weighed at age 18. I propose this is a benchmark for all middle-aged men.

Hear me out before you sic the attack dogs on me.

This proposition assumes you were pretty much done growing at age 18 and were neither super skinny, fat or heavily-muscled due to competitive sports. Essentially, you were an active late-stage teenager and entry-level young man. That was me and I weighed 161 lbs. for my Army physical, circa 1972.

Three years later, I weighed 169 lbs. for my Army exit physical.

So, using my 10 percent plus proposition, this pegs my ideal weight at 177 lbs. and that’s my target ideal weight expected to be achieved on or around my 64th birthday.

Now, I would modify this higher if I was chasing a more heavily-muscled outcome but that isn’t a goal at this point in my life. My benchmarks are, as Jeff Cavaliere of ATHLEAN-X website describes, light, lean and strong. I do want to be above average in the cardiovascular department.

Release the attack dogs!"

Over a dozen people added to the discussion. Some agreed but more took exception to my proposition. Honestly, I believe some of these naysayers took my comments too personally. Rather than get in a back-and-forth debate with them, I chose not to but did add the following clarifying comment:

"If you read my initial post, my assumptions were that this mythical 18-year old was done growing, not skinny or fat or heavily-muscled. Basically, normal or average.

The 10 percent allows for an American reality that most of us are less active than we were in high school. Realize my frame of reference is my generation when we walked to school, played outdoors and had PE class every day in high school. There were no video games or computers or smartphones.

Not asking anyone to accept my proposition. My guess is that those who won’t are those who would also reject the BMI benchmarks."

There was one comment that I thought added the greatest perspective to this discussion:

"I propose that all middle-aged men should be more flexible with their goal weight.

You have never been this age before and when you get to goal you may realize that what you thought was ideal actually isn't.

Which was my experience based on my simple initial goal of my favorite adult weight. I found it was too high when I got there so I adjusted in a series of steps until I found my ideal weight for now rather than 30 to 40 years ago. And after maintaining a while and adding some muscle I adjusted back up again. Especially for someone training your ideal weight isn't set in stone forever.

My 18 YO weight would be too low for me now, my weight when at my muscular peak in my late 20's would be too high. Both weights are irrelevant to me now, I don't have the same goals or capabilities I had then.

For comparison my current best weight is 168 lbs at 5'9 for my current fitness goals."

Another benchmark that I’m sure you’re aware of is the Body Mass Index, or BMI.

(BMI) is a measurement of a person’s weight with respect to his or her height. It is more of an indicator than a direct measurement of a person’s total body fat.

BMI might correlate with total body fat, meaning that as the BMI score increases, so does a person’s total body fat. This isn’t always the case for athletes or other heavily-muscled people.

The World Health Organization, which I take everything they publish with a grain of salt, defines an adult who has a BMI between 25 and 29.9 as overweight - an adult who has a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese - a BMI below 18.5 is considered underweight, and between 18.5 to 24.9 a healthy weight.

So, with a current bodyweight in the 185-lb. range, according to WHO, I’m overweight with a calculated BMI of 25.8. At my targeted weight of 177.0 lbs., my BMI would be 24.7 and WHO would classify me as being at a healthy weight.

Let me dial my life clock back to a picture of what I weighed when close to the 161 lbs I weighted for my Army physical exam, circa 1972. Probably the best photo I have is one taken about two years later while stationed in the Republic of South Korea. I had a 10-speed bicycle that I used for my primary transportation and like a lot of young soldiers, I walked a lot.

My best guess is that I weighed around 165 lbs. in this photo, close to the 161-lb. starting weight I mentioned earlier when I said: “My ideal weight is no more than 10 percent higher than what I weighed at age 18.”

So, taking this 161-lb. starting weight and adding 10 percent to it, the Pierini Fitness middle-aged man bodyweight benchmark calculates to a bodyweight of 177-lbs. and that’s what I’m currently training to weigh by my 64^th birthday coming up in less than six weeks. At this bodyweight, my BMI would be 24.7 and I would no longer be considered “overweight.”

By way of comparison, here’s a current photo taken a little over one week ago: