An Ideal Number

"The WHO and the National Heart, Lungs and Blood Institute classify a BMI between 20 and 22 as 'ideal' in the sense that mortality and morbidity risks are minimized in this range."

Whose Fault Is It We're Getting Fat, Inas Rashad, 2005

This is the second time in the last couple weeks I have seen reference to the health benefits of having a BMI that is not only in the "normal" category, but at the lower end of this range. For my height (5' 8"), my corresponding ideal weight range is 132-145. Not bad. I'd have to weigh over 164 to be overweight by the 25+ BMI standard, and that's pretty big (for me).

Given that 2/3 of American adults are overweight (with BMI of 25+), I wonder what percentage are above this ideal, with a BMI exceeding 22...Huh, I wasn't able to figure this out from a quick google search. A lot, I figure.

Of course, the usual caveats about BMI apply, and don't forget the possibility of "normal weight obesity" that occurs by having too high a body fat percentage for your weight.

Robert and I started doing strength training three nights ago (for 15-25 minutes per night). I had been disinclined to get my act together enough to set up a schedule for when we would do upper, core, and lower sections of the body, so I decided to take an easier and kind of more fun approach - using the roll of a die, with higher, middle, and lower rolls corresponding to the three body areas. This led to great confusion when I used the term "higher roll" not to refer to the numbers 5, 6 on Robert's die (which for some weird reason has actual numerals on it), but rather one-dot and two-dot, because in my mind, I was thinking of the dots layered on top of each other in a pyramid fashion, with one-dot and two-dot on top and thus "higher." It made me laugh a lot when I realized how nuts this is, and speculated that there was indeed once a society on this planet that used such a number ordering scheme but that rampant confusion quickly led to its downfall when the number of dots involved reached more than about ............. many.

In any case, we're basically sorted out now and have plans to do our exercises 6 days per week, skipping Wednesday. And because it is a no-no to do the same body parts two days in a row, we do divide the numbers on the die into 1, 2, 3 vs. 4, 5, 6 to correspond to the two areas we did not just do the previous day. Thursdays start over with 1, 2; 3, 4; and 5, 6 again.

Super Extra Special Mr. Show video tie-in! What is the biggest number?

Me: Sally, I could have done without the word "blood" up there.
Me: Ugh, yeah, sorry about that.