The Percentages

Recently, my husband has been losing a little weight because he had some blood test results which were cause for some small concern. It's nothing incredibly serious, at least not yet, but even someone who is not greatly overweight can have health issues related to body fat. In particular, visceral fat, or fat around your organs which you can't necessarily see easily by looking at a person's body can cause Type 2 diabetes because this type of fat causes more issues with insulin resistance. This is likely the reason he needs to lose a little weight.

It's actually a little ironic that my husband, who has always weighed less than me by a wide margin, has had troubling blood test results while I seem to be okay. It does seem that my fat on the outside is less damaging than his fat on the inside. At any rate, my point is not to compare my fat to his fat, but rather to talk about his weight loss and mine.

As is so often the case with men, he is losing weight relatively rapidly and without much of a struggle. He has cut back on portions and cut out obvious things like sweets (and the donuts that he loves so well) and has lost 10 lbs. in about 3 weeks. He has always exercised for about 40-60 minutes on a regular basis, though he has made an effort to do so 5 days a week instead of 3 or 4 as he was doing. All in all, his changes have not been what anyone could consider radical and he hasn't chafed mentally against them much. The fact that he is not a food addict (like me) is evident in the relative emotional ease with which he has made the changes.

My husband told me that one of his work acquaintances remarked that he looked different and asked if he had lost weight. He has lost only 10 lbs. and someone has noticed already. It took me about 50 lbs. before any appreciable change was noticeable by others. I noticed in my wrists about 30 lbs. in. These differences remind me of the fact that every pound is more meaningful the smaller you become. As a percentage of his starting weight (and of the weight he needs to lose), each pound is more meaningful to him. Each pound for him is perhaps 1/30th of what he needs to lose. Even after all of my losses, each pound is 1/130th of what I still need to lose.

I try to keep in mind that when I started all of this, each pound was about 1/230th of what I needed to lose and every pound I lose makes the next one more meaningful. The percentages keep getting better and more impressive the longer I keep at this. Since I don't look much "better" in my opinion (just different - smaller fat as opposed to bigger fat), this is one more thing that can motivate me to continue when I start to feel like my success is relatively unimpressive or inconsequential.