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Old 03-23-2009, 12:32 AM   #1  
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I am trying to understand how weight is calculated in UK

I see some people say something like 16 stone 3 lbs

it's like mixed with stones and pounds.

Then many people from UK just use the weights we here in the US use pounds.

it's a little confusing to me can someone clear it up for me?

If you went to the UK and told someone I weight 200 pounds would the average person know what you are talking about?

how much is a stone exactly?thanks
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Old 03-23-2009, 01:06 AM   #2  
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1 stone = 14 pounds :-)
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Old 03-23-2009, 03:43 AM   #3  
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Unless it happened to be people's own weight (like mine) or they were weightlosers, most people wouldn't know exactly how much it was. I can keep up to 12 stone plus in my head (168lbs) but after that I've got to work it out as I go.

To make life more complicated for us now, children in school are taught in kilos, and in centimetres rather than feet and inches. So very usually now if you go to the gym, you've got to stand on the stepper machine converting your stones to pounds, then dividing by 2.2 to get your kilo weight before you can type your stats into the machine. At least our brains get a work out!
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Old 03-23-2009, 06:41 AM   #4  
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There are 14 pounds in a stone, so 140 pounds is exactly 10 stone. 145 pounds will be 10 stone 5 pounds. 147 pounds is 10 stone 7 pounds, or in other words 10 stone and a half (i.e. half of one stone being 7 pounds).

200 pounds is 14 stone 4 pound. While 200 pound is a big weight milestone in the US (like Oprah saying she's hit the big 2-0-0), it's not in the UK (although I'm personally looking forward to getting under the 200 mark).

I'm a Brit, and I like using the stone and pounds system because it's nicer to lose weight in stones and pounds, rather than just one massive number in pounds, but I do also track my weight purely in pounds.

This gets all the more confusing as the official weight system in the UK is metric so doctors etc. will always weigh in kilos.

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Old 03-23-2009, 11:31 AM   #5  
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Yeah, I kinda wish everyone hadn't been so resistant to switching to metric when I was a kid. We would all be converted and used to it by now. It really is a much easier system. Most folks can handle doing math by 10s. One of the reasons the ancients were able to accomplish such great feats in architecture is they relied on the basic principle of "KISS"--Keep It Simple, Stupid!

One thing that really gets to me in construction is that an engineers tape is foot measurements that are divided into 10ths rather than inches. That means 3 and 1/2 feet is read 3 and 5/10ths. Who the heck came up with that idea?
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Old 03-27-2009, 02:59 PM   #6  
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And what is a cubit, anyways?
So if using Stones as a measure of weight involves a huge amount of calculation, why not just stick to pounds? Or is the use of a "stone" a cultural thing?
Here we officially use kg, but everyone uses pounds. We officially use km, but never use miles anymore. We use cm officially, but inches are used mostly. But using mm makes sense for small tasks. Oh, and litres are used, and I can't even recall what a quart is anymore, or a gallon (imperial or otherwise)!
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Old 03-27-2009, 03:21 PM   #7  
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It's a generational thing. When I was in school we were taught in pounds and ounces (counting in base 16 and base 14); in pounds, shillings and pence (base 12, base 20, base 240); in feet and inches (base 12) and it didn't seem hard cos that's just what it was.

I'm only guessing but I should think slimming clubs stick to pounds, because 1 lb loss is quicker than 1kg, and marking the stones puts in other little target levels to have achieved.

No idea what a cubit is.
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Old 03-27-2009, 03:28 PM   #8  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kiramira View Post
So if using Stones as a measure of weight involves a huge amount of calculation, why not just stick to pounds? Or is the use of a "stone" a cultural thing?
It doesn't involve a huge amount of calculation to weigh in scales and pounds, it just depends what you're weighing with. Analogue bathroom scales in the UK measure in stones, with markers dividing each stone up into pounds. This is what my scales are like (picture) - I need to do an extra calculation to work it out in pounds. I have some less accurate digital scales too, which are set to display in stones and pounds (but I believe they can also do just pounds or kilos, so it's not a problem here).

A stone is to a pound just as a pound is to ounces, or kilograms are to grammes, or feet are to inches. I'm 5'7" tall, I wouldn't say 67 inches. I wouldn't say 12 eggs, I'd say a dozen. I wouldn't add 16oz of sugar to my pan if I was making jam, I'd add a pound. If we're using the metric system, I wouldn't say my car weighs about 1,500 kilos, I'd say it weighs about 1 1/2 tonnes. Lots of examples there, but the way I see it is that when you weigh a human, using stones and pounds just means that you are using the appropriate size unit of measurement for what you're weighing.

Last edited by tinycities; 03-27-2009 at 03:34 PM.
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Old 03-27-2009, 03:38 PM   #9  
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I watch alot of BBC Canada here, and I always have to do serious mental gymnastics when watching Gillian McKeith's show -- her participants get up on the scale and the announcer usually says something like:
"Joanie Bennett weighs in at a COLOSSAL 16 stone 12 pounds, almost 6 stones over her ideal weight".
Leaving me going:

OK, so 16 stones is 16 x 14 which equals 16 x 10 = 160 plus 16 x 4 = 64 plus 12 which equals 236 lbs, and she has to lose 6 stones = 6 x 14 or 6 x 15 - 6 = 84 lbs so her ideal weight would be 236 - 84 which equals 152 lbs...or so....I think...I better go over the maths again....

And then at the end, the announcer will say that
"Joanie Bennett has lost an amazing 3 stone 2 lbs in the past 3 months"
And I have to do it all over again!!!!



I guess it is a cultural thing...

Kira

Last edited by kiramira; 05-14-2009 at 04:41 PM.
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Old 04-02-2009, 08:38 PM   #10  
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I'm not too bad with working in pounds but after about 200 I usually have to get the calculator out to work out the stone equivalent. Kilos confuse the **** out of me though. When I used to watch Biggest Loser Australia it took me forever to get the hang of what they were all losing. My mobile phone converter app would only convert kilos to pounds and not to stones so I'd do that then convert again!
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Old 05-10-2009, 01:40 PM   #11  
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I calculate my weight but mulitiplying the stones by 14 then adding the pounds. So my current weight 11st 8lb is 162.

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