Weight-loss in Butter

[LEE]

Losing a kilogram or a couple of pounds is admirable and I know it cheers me up.

However, it doesn't really give me a good idea of my success, so...
I just converted my weight loss, from August last year until today, into your typical 500g packs of butter.  Just how much butter have I lost?

It turns out that I've lost 18 packs of butter and I have 16 left to lose.

When I visualise that I find it incredible. Incredible that I (sort of) had that stuck on me somehow.  Is it any wonder that cycling feels easier than it did last year?  (Imagine panniers with 18 packs of butter in them).

How many packs have you lost and how many do you need to lose?

[tiermat]

This idea works well, I remember my mum talking about weight loss as bags of sugar.

[crowriver]

Doesn't butter come in 250g packets?

Anyway, yeah I tend to think in terms of bags of sugar too. Lost five bags of sugar last year, aiming for the same this year. Ten in total.

[LEE]

250g and 500g. (Actually I just looked at a 500g tub of "Marg"..there was no butter in the fridge).

There's something more visceral about imagining butter rather than sugar I think.  Lard would be even better.

Kudos to anyone posting the first photo of themselves next to a pile of butter in the Supermarket, equivalent to their weight loss this year.

[rr]

I tried to do this with lard in sainsburys bit there wasn't enough of the display. Sobering thing to see.

[Toady]

A famous quote:  During the 2009 Tour, Wiggins said: “Compared to the 2007 Tour, my weight loss means I’m carrying the equivalent of six bags of sugar less up a mountain. Shedding that weight is all that I can do to give myself the best chance on the climbs other than taking drugs, and I’m not going to do that.”

I seem to remember Jan Ullrich talking about weight in terms of bags of sugar.  In fact it was searching for that quote that led me to the Wiggins one above.

Staying on a cycling theme, I remember seeing cycling enthusiast Oprah Winfrey appear on TV, having lost a load of weight, towing a small truck full of lard equivalent to what she had lost.

[caerau]

Since I started the cycling last year (May 28th 2012 I regard as the begining - the day we went home with my first new bike for nearly 2 years) I've lost 25 bags of sugar, or 50 (!) 500g slabs of butter.  I did have a lot to lose to begin with though.  I don't think I'm really fat anymore but there's still some spare tyre there and I'm still 2 stone up on my 18 year old self weight - oh to get back down to that.

What you said above about things being easier was manifested when I had the chance to play footie with my toddler grandson a couple of months ago and the difference in lightness on my feet was astounding from some months earlier.   
Of course, playing football with a toddler mostly involves me juggling the ball about and him standing there looking amazed, bless.  Hence the jumping about by me.

[L CC]

About this much.

[LEE]

Maybe butter would be a much better way to make people aware of their obesity issues.

I mean BMI is useless as a way of understanding/visualising the problem (and not even meaningful in many cases).

Telling someone they are 34 packs of butter (500g packs in my case) overweight is a real wake-up call.

It's also quite motivating to use as a way of visualising your weight loss. It's actually quite amazing that you can quite easily shed a pack of butter in a week.  You can hold a pack of butter and think "I weigh this much less this week and I'm not trying to pedal it uphill any more".

[caerau]

I mean BMI is useless as a way of understanding/visualising the problem (and not even meaningful in many cases).

Oh indeedy - I get told by my Nintendon Wii Fit (I use it to weight myself) that I am still in the grossly obese range of BMI (I think  it was 32.43 this morning) and that my ideal weight is 11 stone.  ROFL!  Er I think not.  I use to play prop forward as a lad - I am very heavily built and would never in a zillion years get anywhere near 11 stone.  BMI is based on the average person - if you're not average it can be a complete joke.  My waist size, relative to my gut size however - a much better test of obesity imo - now that *has* improved drastically.  I think they're about the same now - they were not so six months ago.
I told my mother that ideal weight and she laughed - she weighs more than 11 stone and is a slim fit woman who has been a weighwatchers aficionado for many years.

[Wowbagger]

I just bought 2kg of recycled Paul Metcalfe from Waitrose. The 500g packs were being discounted.

[LEE]

I just bought 2kg of recycled Paul Metcalfe from Waitrose. The 500g packs were being discounted.

My wife mentioned that I'd lost some weight off my arse recently.  I'm glad it found a good home.

[hellymedic]

This idea works well, I remember my mum talking about weight loss as bags of sugar.

Whereas my (Danish) mother referred to her tummy as her 'butter mountain'...

[ferret]

I think the sugar thing is because sugar used to be weighed in pounds

[crowriver]

Rather than butter, in terms of fat this is closer to what we are talking about. Here's a 250g pat:



To think I shed 20 of these last year, another 20 to go...

[rr]

As I weighed our large Christmas turkey I realised that I'd lost nearly twice that.

[hellymedic]

As I weighed our large Christmas turkey I realised that I'd lost nearly twice that.

We only had a 1.35kg chicken for Christmas as there were just the two of us.

I suppose I'd lost five chickens last year.

[Jakob]

[Ham]

Thing I like about the butter visualisation is that you can mentally spread it, which gives a good view as to where it sits, then you can mentally scrape it off, rather like toast.

[itsbruce]

^ Kinky.

Disappointed this isn't a butter-based diet thread.