Bumblebee

Morning, folks. Hope you were able to manage without me.

As part of the ongoing work on my health and weight and fitness, I am upgrading and replacing my wardrobe. I did this back in January and happily the clothes are now generally too big. Therefore, to reward, but more to reinforce, my success, I am replacing a shirt and slacks when I lose another five pounds. This week, I managed to lose 7.2 pounds! That brings the total loss to 135.6 pounds. So, dutifully, I headed to Macy's at Penn Square for the replacements.

After about an hour of looking and consulting other shops, I left with a lt. yellow long sleeve Polo shirt and a pair of Haggar slacks. The shirt came from Macy's, the slacks from JC Penney's. First, let me just say, that off the rack shopping rules. I have missed it; it is strangely thrilling. Second, the sizes were really telling. The shirt is a large and I could wear it with a tee shirt on underneath. The slacks were 40X34. I could fit into 38X34 but they were unflattering. The pockets were pulled open as the pleats. Gents and ladies, there's the sign that slacks don't fit. If the pants are supposed to have pleats, but your wearing them renders them without pleats, put them back and go up a size or two.

I'll grant you that sizes are variable. I think for men this is less of an issue that for ladies. Men's clothes for the most part are off by 2 inches from manufacturer to manufacturer. I have heard tell at my WW meetings of wildly variant sizing in ladies wear. So, the point I making is sizing yourself is another helpful sign of loss and improvement, but don't get freaked out if all pants, sweaters, and shirts aren't created equally.

As for me, this new yellow shirt and black slacks are huge reminders of where I am have come from. When I started, my waist was 54" and I wore generally a 3X shirt. I don't know how to translate the difference in size of shirt other than to use my collar size. I am down from a 20 to a 16.5. My waist is weird because as the weight comes off, I have a lot of excess skin. While my hips are narrower than it appears, I really can't cram myself into slacks without bundling that skin somewhere. Nonetheless, these slacks mark a decrease of 14 inches off of my waist. Anyone who still remembers the formula for volume of a cylinder can give us data. Wait. I'll look it up. This should be good.

Here's the formula: pi * radius squared * height. Okay, for sake of example, I will approximate the height by measuring from the bottom of my sternum to the top of my thighs. That figure is 18 inches. The volume of a cylinder with a 54" circumference then would be 3.14*18*54 or 3052 cubic inches. My current size, as a 40" circumference cylinder would be 3.14*18*40 or 2261 cubic inches. That is a percent decrease from start of 26% decrease in overall fat volume, assuming that my kidneys haven't gotten smaller in the interim. That's a heck of a transformation.

The title of the post is meant to reflect two things. The first is the black and yellow color scheme of the clothes purchased. The second you have to figure out. Only the true geek will recognize this. Leave your guesses in the combox.