how To set a target body weight
One of the biggest seeds for The Second Half was planted about a year ago, when, for the first time ever, I stepped on a scale at work and my weight started with the number two. I’ve always been stocky, and even chubby at times. But at 5’ 10”, passing the 200-pound mark put me in a new league of portliness.
That explains the steady decline in play on the pitch, I thought to myself.
I vowed to shed a few pounds, but life kept getting in the way, with a new job and home renovation being the most formidable obstacles. Both are in the rearview mirror, so it’s time to double down on the health and wellness wager, starting with weight loss, while still juggling the demands of family, work, and life in general.
Stepping on the scale on day one of The Second Half, I weighed in at 203.8 pounds. (Note: I invested in a smart scale for this project, the Nokia Body Cardio, which will let me track weight, body fat, hydration, and more on my smart phone). I was coming off a 10-day beach vacation, where I didn’t hold back on the food and drink, knowing my years of indulgence were about to come to a screeching halt. But still, almost 205 pounds!
What should my target weight look like? I first took a very unscientific approach in answering that question by scanning the roster of the United States Men’s National Team for a player with a similar body type.
Standing 5’ 11”, Jordan Morris (above), who also plays forward for the MLS’s Seattle Sounders FC, has an inch on me, but I feel like we have the same basic build—save for the fact that he is twenty years younger and in perfect game shape. (As long as I’m in fantasy mode here, imagining my ideal soccer self, I also like Jordan’s hard-charging, explosive style of play.)
Morris weighs 185 pound. Between his extra inch of height and muscle mass that I simply won’t be able to muster at my age, no matter how assiduous my training, I decided to shave five pounds and make my target weight 180 pounds.
Like I said, an unscientific method. So I decided to run it by my nutritionist and family doctor.
“When was the last time you weighed 180 pounds?” my nutritionist Liz asked. I’ve never been a habitual weight watcher, so I couldn’t say for sure. But I recall stepping on a scale now and then during my grad school years in London, where weight is measured in stones, with one stone equaling 14 pounds. I can remember being between 12.5 and 13 stones, or 175 and 182 pounds. That was the late 1990s.
Liz and my doctor also ran me through a couple body weight calculators. First was the Ideal Body Weight (IBW) formula, which for men, equals 106 pounds plus 6 pounds for every inch in height over 5 feet. At 5’ 10”, my IBW is 166 pounds. Men with a large frame can add 10 percent to the total, so if I give myself that allowance, my target weight goes up to 182.6 pounds.
The other metric we looked at was Body Mass Index, or BMI. With a BMI of 29, I’m technically on the border of overweight and obese. My doctor did admit that BMI is an imperfect weight management tool. Nonetheless, if I do want to get into the normal health range, I’ll need a BMI of 25, which works out to around 175 pounds.
And so, after all the number crunching and second opinions, my original target weight of 180 pounds feels like the right target, though an ambitious one, since it will mean shedding more than ten percent of my body weight. All I can say if I do hit the mark, Jordan Morris better send me one of his team jerseys to run a victory lap in.