BMI - is it phat?

Your BMI is supposed to help you determine if you're overweight or underweight or a healthy weight. It's a better measure than just your body weight as it takes into account your height as well. You can determine it like this:

Take your weight (eg. 64 kilograms)
Divide it by your height squared (eg. 1.74 metres * 1.74 = 3.0276)

In this case my BMI is 21.14, which is within what is considered the normal range of 19 to 25. A BMI higher than 25 indicates you are overweight (use 27 as the cut-off if you're very muscular), and a BMI higher than 30 indicates you are obese.

A limitation of the BMI is that it doesn't really take into account muscle versus body fat. It serves only as a rough indicator of whether you would be considered a healthy weight for your height, acting only as a jazzed up simplified way to determine this without having to pull out the healthy weight to height charts. It doesn't even take into account whether you are a small, medium or large frame build - as the healthy weight to height charts do.

A better way to think is in terms of body composition. See, you could have the same BMI as someone else but while they have mostly muscle you could have mostly fat on your skeleton. And your weight might lead you to think you're losing fat, whereas really you might be dehydrated or be losing muscle mass (which is heavier than fat). By measuring your body composition you can see far more clearly where you are at and if you are making progress with your overall exercise/health/life.

So how much body fat is healthy? Here are a few suggested healthy ranges for body fat:

Women: 18 - 28%, 'ideal' at 24%, 'toned/firm' at 18 - 20%
Men: ~15%

From: Aston D. Fat or Fiction: Are you living a fairy tale?. 2002; 2:14-19 (renowned Australian bodybuilder Donna Aston)

Healthy body fat ranges(%)
Age	Female	Male
20-39	22-32	9-20
40-59	24-34	12-22
60-79	26-37	14-24

From: Gallagher et al. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000; 72:694–701

So in taking the outer limit values from these two sources, somewhere between 18-32% is a generally healthy range for females 20-39, and 9-20% is a healthy range for males the same age.

In her book, Donna Aston says for a female to look toned and firm, they would have to achieve between 18 to 20% body fat, so the lower ranges are more what most people are aiming at, with only elite female athletes generally being below 15% body fat (male athletes getting down to 4%) and Donna herself competing in a bodyshaping competition weighed 55kg with 8% body fat.

Now that we know what we're aiming at, how can we measure it? Body fat scales or body composition scales are the only realistic answer to this (unless you want to do underwater weighing in a lab every day, hmm). Chuck out the old 'weight' bathroom scales and invest in a decent set of scales that will actually tell you useful information and allow you to measure progress.

Body Composition or body fat scales work by using BIA - bioelectrical impedance analysis, which sends out an electric impulse and measures the resistance of body tissues- flowing freely through muscle/water containing tissue and meeting resistance at fat. The impedance data is put into an equation along with your total body weight and entered age/height/gender etc details, and is then usually spat out as a percentage of your total body weight.

When choosing a scale the TANITA InnerScan Body Composition Monitor BC-532 is the Creme de la Creme at $399 with all the functions you could possibly desire and being very accurate, and the PROPERT Glass Body Fat Electronic Bathroom Scale 3040 at $79 is the economic choice but almost as good in terms of accuracy as the top and mid-priced scales but without the extra features (much better than the old weight-only scales).

Seasonal+Moon Planting Guide

I spent ages yesterday plugging into a spreadsheet all of the seasonal sowing times for vegetables and then overlaying the best days to plant according to the moon's phases for the next six months, and it's quite exciting now as I can now tell you exactly what is best planted on the six or seven great planting days each month (according to the moon) for the next six months.

The data is for a temperate climate, NSW, Australia (Southern Hemisphere), 2006, and as the moon phases are different each year the dates change. On the following dates for the remainder of this year, get out into your garden and sow these seeds for maximum results seasonally AND according to the moon's phases:

June 06 -

9 - Broad Beans & Peas
17,18 - Onions
26, 27 - Artichoke, Asparagus, Cabbages, Lettuce, Mustard, Cress, Rhubarb crowns and Spinach

July 06 -

6,7 - Broad Beans, Cape Gooseberry, Capsicum, Peas and Rosella
14,15,16 - Beetroot, Carrots, Onion, Parsnip and Potatoes

August 06 -

1 - Artichoke, Cabbage, Celery, Chicory, Chinese Cabbage, Cress, Endive, Herbs, Mustard, Lettuce, Silverbeet, Rhubarb
3 - Cape Gooseberry, Capsicum, Choko, Cucumbers, Peas, Rosella, Sweet Corn and Tomatoes
10,11,12 - Beetroot, Carrots, Parsnip, Potatoes, Radish
29, 30 - Artichoke, Cabbage, Celery, Chicory, Chinese Cabbage, Cress, Endive, Herbs, Mustard, Lettuce, Silverbeet, Rhubarb

September 06 -

7 - Beans, Cape Gooseberry, Capsicum, Choko, Cucumbers, eggplants, marrows, melons, okra, pumpkin, rosella, squash, sweet corn, tomato, zucchini
25,26,27 - Artichoke, Asparagus, Cabbage, Celery, Chicory, Chinese Cabbage, Cress, Endive, Herbs, Kohlrabi, Mustard, Leeks, Lettuce, Rhubarb, Silverbeet

Tasty wheat

This lovely sack of organic wheat arrived yesterday.

I was interested in ordering from Demeter, as they're NSW-based, but as they have not yet emailed me their distributor list for bulk grain I went ahead and ordered from QLD in the meantime.

Both Robin and Kay from "The Oaks" were very friendly and helpful - and fast in sending the grain out, much to my delight. The variety of wheat they sent was a non-hybrid Hard Red Wheat "KXPF" originally bred in NSW with seedstock originally from Canada "Manitoba Red", and before that originating from the Russian Ukraine. The Oaks have used the same seedstock for the last 50 years. It is a very hard red wheat with a moisture content less than 11%, great for milling. They also state that it is grown on heavily mineralised soil and they gave a lot of information about their farming practices, which was a nice change from having no clue about the food you're putting in your mouth, where it came from, how it was grown, how it was stored etcetera.

They use diatomaceous earth in storage which has a ground flour consistency, is high in silica and kills weavels by its abrasive action. It is however NOT the diatomaceous earth used in swimming pool filters (which is produced using chemical processing to cause it to form a crystalline structure, which can cause respiratory irritation if inhaled).

In winter the Oaks also produce Gala Wheat, Rye, Triticale, Linseed, Fenugreek, Canary Seed, Winter Beef (Pole Herefords) and sometimes winter onions, chick peas and safflower. In summer they produce Millet (White French), Mung Beans and some birdseed millet (Japanese & Hungarian), watermelons, rock melons, pumpkins as well as purely grass fed beef. They do not use hybrid varieties or GE strains.

Tonight we milled about 750g of the wheat by hand using our Retsel Lil Ark grain mill, which took about 25 minutes or so, and then I baked a loaf of bread with it (about another 20 minutes preparation time, and approximately 30 minutes baking time, for a non-sourdough quick-rise yeast bread). We would motorise the mill but at the moment we're grateful for the exercise - it is fantastic upper body exercise and my refusal to buy bread more than occasionally each fortnight nowdays gives us the incentive to mill it. The bread was delicious, and heavy (as expected using whole flour and not giving much time for rise). We like it heavy though. Mmm, spread with delicious Gympie butter it is amazing.

The thing I've noticed is that when making dough from store bought flours (of any kind) my hands get very very dry afterwards - when I am making dough with wholewheat flour which has been freshly milled my hands feel moisturised afterwards - I guess because when you mill the grain it leaves the whole of the wheatgerm in, thereby preserving the vitamin E content. Wholewheat flour from the store is a poor, poor substitute, more likely to be rancid than white and still not containing the full spectrum nutrition (including the wheatgerm/vitamin E) of freshly milled flour.

I actually had a very busy night tonight as in addition to making bread I chopped up about 15 large beetroots and made them into a half dozen litre jars of beet kvass, which is a very nutritious fermented beverage/tonic. Consequently my hands are stained like blood. For the last jar I was preparing I ran out of whey so substituted kefir-whey as an experiment, so that will be interesting (wonder what alcoholic beetroot-ale would taste like... might be what I end up with, who knows).

Little Kefir babies!

The GAPS lecture I attended inspired me to finally seek out Kefir.

I recieved our new "babies" from Dom the Kefir guru yesterday and tonight we drank our first batch of Kefir goodness. I like it, I like it a lot, and I'm going to drink it every day; it made me feel good.

Kefir grains look like little cauliflowerettes and consist of billions of bacteria, yeasts and a unique polysaccharide, kefiran, living all gummed up together in a little cluster referred to as a grain. You take the grains and add them to milk and they culture the milk, kind of like yoghurt, but different. The beverage produced is extremely beneficial - the best broad-spectrum probiotic possible.

Over time the grains multiply like how a daffodil bulb does - growing mini grains off the main mass of each established grain, which then split and grow larger. You end up with lots of grains to share with friends, or to eat on their own.

I could yak on about these amazing grains for ages, but it's best if you see Dom's Kefir In-Site for more information, as he is the master of these little wonders.