Measuring weight loss with a belt
I don’t have a scale handy that is capable of giving my weight, but I’m skeptical about whether that number is meaningful anyway.
What is meaningful is the amount of belt I could be using. It looks like about 6 inches (a little more than 15 cm) of loss on my waist in the past year or so.
MAS, has a post about his skepticism of Body Mass Index. Hugh Jackman and Mike Tyson at his peak would measure as “Obese” according to the BMI, basically. In that post he cites The Frankie Method for measuring leanness. Frankie was a trainer at a former gym of MAS, and his measure was: “Can you see your abs? If no, then you are too fat.” My answer to that is still no, but I can see the outlines of where they will be.
I made a diagram:
MAS
February 27, 2010 12:09pm
Love the flowchart. I am working on a post that describes a metric that provides more guidance than the Frankie method and gets around the problems of using BMI.
Joe Crawford
February 27, 2010 12:14pm
I updated the flowchart, since leanness does not automatically imply “healthy” – people in a famine, anorexics, and the sick may have abs to show, but health is not the thing, it’s simply, “not fat.”
I’ll be looking forward to your post MAS!
Fat Loss Metrics For Men | MAS o Menos
February 27, 2010 1:28pm
Emerita Lovato Preciado
November 17, 2014 2:42am
The Frankie method is ridiculous, but true.
Joe I agree totally, you can’t be healthy when you are obese, but if you are lean, that does not mean you are healthy.