by Ninja Master Mark Fisher
Body Mass Index, or BMI, is virtually worthless. Of all the limited metrics available to us to get an idea of what’s going on with your health and hotness, your BMI has the distinction of being the most useless.
BMI is literally just your weight divided by your height (specifically the square of your height). To get your BMI, you can use an online calculator, or just do it yourself if you love math. (If you’re using pounds and inches instead of kilograms and meters, you’ll have to multiply your number by 703.)
Supposedly “normal” is 18.5 to 25. But since BMI doesn’t take body fat percentage or the size of someone’s skeletal frame into account, this number is utterly meaningless. It’s entirely possible to be skinny fat as hell but have a normal BMI. Conversely, it’s possible to be deemed “overweight” if you carry a lot of lean muscle mass.
I like this picture as it makes it clear BMI is silly. That said, if you’re 6 feet and shredded at 250, you’re on a lotta juice, brah. Just sayin…
When looking to assess where you’re at in regards to health and hotness, body fat percentage, circumference measurements, and pictures will be a far better guide.
As always, your scale weight can contribute to this overall picture. Just remember it’s only by looking at all possible metrics that you can get a good handle on what’s going on with your physique (and what type of progress you’re making).
Learn to Cook. Seriously.
Learning to prepare your own food is a cornerstone of sustaining the health and hotness lifestyle.
I’ve seen many folks make lifestyle changes that have lasted for several years. And I’ve seen others make a dramatic transformation only to fall off the boat.
In my experience, the folks who succeed in doing it long term find a way to make their healthful food choices enjoyable.
Can long term success be achieved by finding some go-to take out or delivery options? Sure! But it’s not practical for most folks to eat out every meal. And if it IS practical, rarely do they have the will power to alter their order every time and/or stick to places with super healthy options.
Although it’s a pain in the ass at first, I think there are few better investments. Most people will not be able to make permanent change if they only eat dry chicken breast and steamed broccoli.
Spend the time to learn basic cooking techniques and create your own personal inventory of healthy and delicious recipes. If you have 10 to 15 recipes for meals you absolutely love, you should have sufficient variety and be ready to kick some sustainable ass!
To get started, check out the Tasty Ninjas Recipes page on Facebook for some awesome starter dishes.
If You Need to Choose Between Food Prep and Exercise…
Choose food prep.
Jiggawhat??
Here’s the deal, gentle reader. If you’re planning on working out 4-5 times per week, but can’t fit in time to prepare your meals… workout out 2-3 times per week and take the extra time for grocery shopping and cooking.
Since you can’t out-train your diet, this is a much better way of doing business. Getting in 5 workouts a week won’t be super helpful for your health and hotness goals unless you’re eating properly for your goals.
You’ll still get pretty great results with 2-3 workouts per week and a fridge of full of delicious food and prepared meals. Conversely, 4-5 workouts per week with little nutritional adherence won’t get you very far!
(Hat tip to the super awesome Josh Hillis for this nugget.)
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