Thinking about - size and shape

I'm almost at that avatar change thing I've been mentioning as a diet target :-)

The target was to not just dip under 13 stone when I'd starved myself for a day but to be under that mark consistently. And I'm there now :-) Pretty soon I'll get that camera out and turn my "Feed Me" Pocket Dwagon into something I can use as an avatar.

(Btw - if anyone's looking to get me presents, my birthday's in November and I still have lots of space for Pocket Dwagons. Just sayin')

What everyone needs to have is an idea of what size and shape they want and need to be. From that, follows what kind of diet they need to be following and what exercise they need to do. Doing the diet and/or the exercise "because that's what everyone else does" is a Really Bad Idea. It has to be based on things like :

What can I eat ? Ethics/Health considerations come in there
What exercise can I do ? I break if I train too much
What exercise is the right kind ? It may not suit your target
What am I trying to do ? Being too active will cause physical hell later
Am I trying to fight my body's natural shape ? The "starved" look is so unattractive

When I made the choice to start the diet, I'd just gone to a puffy 14 stone 2-3lbs and I had 2 target weights.
13 stone - would see me super fit with stronger arms joining my power legs. Note - that's not "popeye" arms or the butch look that rugby players have because gaining too much muscle would lose me speed and quickness.
11-12 stone - would hopefully see my upper body and face get a lot tighter and less fat/puffy. But without losing any power in my legs. Still got a way to go there.

Incidentally, that hated Body Mass Index calc reckons my 13 stone is 26.88 (Normal-Overweight boundary is 25) and 12 stone would be 24.8. Perhaps 12 stone should be my sensible target considering the speed I want to retain in my legs.

I'm getting sidetracked aren't I ? This post really comes from looking at other people and thinking : "Is that the shape I want to be ?" and the person that really started me thinking was a young chap sitting outside KFC longingly peeking at my fillet burger. He must have been 6 feet plus and obviously worked out. At least occasionally because he had that soft "bigger than he needs to be" that differentiates athletes from those who go to the gym to fit in.

He was bigger than he needed to be. His whole reason for going to the gym would have been to fit in with what the norm appears to be. He wouldn't have had a target for what he needed or wanted to look like. He might be technically fitter than me but if he walked onto a cricket field, he'd be the uncoordinated unskilled mess while I'd be running rings around him.

From my own past, I can think of 3 series of conventional and unconventional training :
Unconventional - paper round. This had me bursting round the block pounding away walking with a bag full of papers. Out of that I gained aerobic fitness plus power legs. I've still got the power legs ... and the weak knees that were damaged by that excess power.
Unconventional - biking to uni. This gave me stomach muscles :-) I'd never had those before and when it came to net practice for the next season, I couldn't bowl. Yeah, I had muscle ... but totally uncoordinated and uncontrolled muscle. Took a while to figure out how to manage them and when I did, I broke the shoulder (unconnected incident).
Conventional - weekly circuits. These were aimed at gaining endurance but all they achieved was to train away my speed while gaining me no endurance.

Sometimes unconventional training is what works. For my part now, I can't do much normal training (cos I break) but I aim to avoid taking lazy ways out. That means taking stairs instead of the elevator or the lift.

I was looking again at people's sizes during the Grand Prix coverage earlier. GP drivers look quite weedy. There's not much to them. I bet they weight maybe 11 stone if that. Yet they run triathlon for fun outside of controlling a car at 200mph for 2 hours withstanding upwards of 5g. They're superfit and aim for a specific shape that lets them be superfit while not being too heavy. Lightness is an advantage.

Similar with the cricket (England v W Indies T20 on telly at the moment) - there's all sizes and shapes in cricket. Little lads are better in the field, big lads whack the ball further. Fast bowling needs height and good arms, spin bowling - not so much.

I'm aiming for the GP driver + legs look :-) But to do that, I'd need to do considerably more training than I do now to sort out my upper body. However, I'm much happier with my look than that lad at the Mall who's locking himself into an "Eat Lots, Exercise Lots, Struggle Lots later" cycle.

For other people ?

Be how you are most comfortable. Don't let yourself be bumped out of your comfort zone by people who think everyone should be unhealthy stick insects. The most attractive people are the confident people, the people who are comfortable with who and how they are. And that goes for Tall People (being stretched can make them elegant), Little People (they make up for height with personality), Wide People (more of 'em to hug). But it's really what's inside that's so important. What shape someone is outside has little to do with what they're like as a person. I tend to look straight past the outside and see people as they really are.

I'm much more comfortable with the way I am now compared to this time last year. And that's measurable too by my trouser waist size being back to what it used to be, plus a new jacket being a size smaller too. But I'm still either not there yet or cameras are lying to me. I've been trying for ages to see if I can get a decent picture of me - no joy yet.

What I'll close on though is we tend to be our own worst judge with our weight. We'll lie to ourselves and say we're too fat when we've got skinny or thin enough when we're still carrying excess. That's where we need to find people we trust to tell us what we need to hear ;-)