A year long effort at losing weight through exercise, food moderation, and, well, smoking again, has yielded great results.  The results have been so good, a few people who have not seen me in a while have looked at me with rather alarmed looks and asked me if I am sick.

 Now, I had always joked that the only way I would ever see the south side of 200 pounds again was if I had my leg amputed or came down with metastic cancer.  Neither have been the reason for the weight loss among the myriad of influences contributing to the benefit.

So I took a new picture today now adorning the blog.  That's the face of a guy who is 5' 11" and 188.  It's not a bad thing.  The tops of my feet get wet in the shower now.  I can bend over and tie my shoe laces without losing my breath.  My knee does not throb as often.  The grocery bill has dropped precipitously, but butts are expensive.

I can actually lay down in regular-sized bathtubs without my shoulders rubbing against the sides -- barely.  A two person tub could be inviting for another again.  Relaxed fit jeans actually feel, well, relaxed rather than snug everywhere but the waist, which has a few inches of fat hanging over.  For, let's face it, relaxed fit jeans are a way for a person to buy clothes a size smaller than they really should in an effort to boost self esteem somehow.  Nothing like actual, regular fit pants being a little baggy to really get that necessary boost.

So I can actually tuck my shirts in without feeling like I am "wearing it out."  Belts are more than a mere ornament, they actually keep my pants up.  I also do not have to inhale to buckle it on the last hole in the belt, either.  Nor to they start to distort as had been done in the past.

 On the downside, fruit spoils faster than sodium-laced snack foods.  Fruit can't be sealed in a time capsule, I guess, but Doritos and Twinkies will be there 100 years from now, provided global warming hasn't flooded over the building cornerstone in which they get buried.

So out of curiosity, I hit the BMI calculator index on the internet, plugging in the old and new weights for the 5' 11" frame.  It comes as no surprise the older weight had me as obese at 37.7.  Obesity by the malnourished twit who devised the scale starts at 30.  Overweight is 25.0 to 29.9.

Well, the current weight of 188 puts me in the overweight category at 26.2. 

Still fat?  Then how come folks caution me not to lose anymore weight?  How come folks quietly ask me if I am sick?

I blame it on my French Canadian genes, water skiing, and football.

Though 5' 11", I have only a 30" inseam.  Torso weighs more than calf, damn it.  (This also explains my glacier speed in sports that kept me a center, catcher, and goalie lo those many years deluding myself I had athletic talent.)

And waterskiing and football developed my quads and hamstrings, such that I had rather well developed, if beefy and slow, legs. 

So who devised the BMI scale?  Was their sample size merely concentration camp survivors? 

I would have to drop another 9 pounds to get to 179 to be the heaviest "normal weight" for my height.  I could melt to 135, or 53 pounds less than that picture, and this scale would say I was on the low end of "normal weight."  Low end of normal weight?  I would be dead, but at least the coffin would be cheaper.  I could split a vault with someone of equally as "normal" weight.

5' 11" and 135?  Models weight more than that, for god's sake. 

Yes, I am going to rationalize, I really have the frame of someone 6' 1" or 6' 2" based on the stubby little Canadian Maple tree trunks that serve as my lower appendages.  Doing that gets me into the high end of the normal weight category, which is not that bad.  At my top weight I had to rationalize I was 7' 3" to get into the normal weight classification.

That isn't a mere rationalization.  It's a delusion.

  Stubby-Legged Canucks Everywhere Feel My Pain 
(Note fabric belt for greater flexibility)