OK, very awkward thread title there, but never mind. All weights are in kilos here - I'm sorry, but I'm just too tired to do the conversion tonight. I'll see how I go tomorrow, but if you need to know the weight in pounds, multiplying the kg figure by 2.2 will have you close to the mark.
This is prompted by an email conversation that I've been having with a friend over the last day or so and it's made both of us think.
Now my friend looks absolutely fantastic. She's about my height of 5'4" and her body is what I want mine to look like when I get to goal. She's quite toned looking, but she's also got boobs and a bum - she's quite curvy, and as I said looks fantastic.
She's getting married in November, and yesterday she said to me that she wants to lose 14 kg. I was shocked by this - I knew she wanted to lose a bit of weight as the wedding dress she chose was a little tight for her, but I didn't realise she wanted to lose that much. I would estimate her weight to be around 60 - 63 kgs, so within the BMI guidelines for our height of 52 - 66 kg.
She had a session with the trainer at her gym and got weighed. Her weight is 70 kg, so I'd underestimated her weight by about 10%, give or take a couple of percentage points. I was curious and asked her to take a guess at my weight. She estimated my weight at 90kg. In kilos, my weight is 108.6, so she's underestimated my weight by around 20%. Her estimate is about where I want to be at the end of the year. After those comments, she is now my new best friend.
So, that got me thinking about how we perceive weight in both ourselves and others. I'm not surprised by my weight. I didn't weigh myself much at all last year, but I always had a rough idea of where I was weight wise. My friend thought that her weight was around 66 kg and was a little bit surprised that she was over that figure. She was very shocked to hear what I weighed.
So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is whether our perceptions of how we and others look at a certain weight reflects the reality. Using the terribly unscientific example of my friend and I, would it be safe to assume that we all tend to underestimate other people's weight by around 10 - 20%? OK, given that we're talking 2 people here, it's not particularly accurate, but it was interesting. And what about how we perceive how we look. I was fairly on the mark in terms of what I weigh, but I'm actively trying to lose weight and weigh myself most mornings. My friend who has not been trying to lose weight underestimated her weight by around 5%.
What do you all think?