Dr. Tim Reid asked me a couple of days ago why I was so numbers driven. I had just spoken at a meeting of diabetes professionals about my success in bringing my weight between February 2006 and May 2008 from 312 pounds, which is a body mass index of 39.5, to 156 pounds, a BMI of 19.8. Today after a nine-hour hike in the mountains yesterday it is even a little lower, 154 pounds, a BMI of 19.5.

Dr. Reid  treats patients at the Mercy Diabetes Center in Janesville, Wisconsin. He also serves as the chairman of the Department of Family Practice for Mercy Health System.

At the meeting I had also told him and the other members of the group how I brought down my A1C level from 14.4 when a doctor first told me in February 1994 that I have type 2 diabetes. Now it is 5.1.

But I fumbled at answering Dr. Reid’s question. Admitting that I am not an engineer with the engineering mentality that delights in numbers, when he asked me why these numbers were so important to me, I didn’t have an answer on the tip of my tongue.

I do now.

When we don’t have specific goals we aren’t able to control our diabetes and our weight without them controlling us. The key is to be as specific as we can.

To have a good chance at being successful in reaching our goals we have to go beyond acknowledging them to ourselves. We have to publicize them.

That means we have to start by stating them in concrete terms. When our goals are weight loss, we need to express them in terms of the body mass index that we are aiming to reach.

The body mass index is a simple tool that relates our weight to our height. It applies equally to men and to women. It’s not perfect, since it doesn’t work for children, weightlifters and other heavily muscled types (because muscle weighs more than fat), and pregnant women. I especially like the U.S. government’s standard and easy-to-use calculator because it recognizes fractions of an inch in height and tenths of pounds in weight. We can easily find it online at http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/


For Checking Our BMI Level

If we would instead express our goals as pounds lost, we would give up something important. We would find it easier to lose track of our goal. For example, I know one man who is famous for losing 180 pounds. That’s great, but he started from a weight of 410 pounds, and when I met him, his BMI was obviously above a normal level.

We need to set our weight loss goal at a normal weight, which is a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9. In acknowledging it, we need to go beyond making a mental note of it. We need to write it down. Better yet would be to track it on a daily basis, which I do in a file on my computer.

Just as important, we need to publicize it. We need to tell our family and friends what our BMI goal is and what it currently is as we progress toward our goal. Talk to them and write them too. We are essentially promising our friends, and friends don’t break promises to friends.

Of course we can change our goals. I set my BMI goal originally at 24.9, barely in the normal range but also conveniently at the weight my discharge papers from the U.S. Army said I had half a century earlier. After reaching that goal, I decided that I would be healthier and feel better if my BMI were 19.5. When I reached my revised goal, I made sure to tell people about it -- not to brag but instead to keep the pressure on me not to exceed that weight.