but I guess I was looking for something outside myself to confirm or deny that I need to change.

From your description I think you already know you need change, you just need to 'get it in writing', so to speak.

Digging through several years of clutter can be both deflating due to feelings of "where does all this crap come from" and uplifting due to "cool, I forgot I had this". The two are separated by a fine line.

Tell me about it. I've been doing that sifting through my dozens boxes of crap that I had at my grandmother's house. Like every stuffed animal I've had since I was 2 and every note passed to me in high school.

It's pretty standard in pediatrics today to encourage as much weight gain as possible until age 2 (babies who don't gain can be diagnosed as "failure to thrive" which comes with just about as much guilt-tripping as you'd guess from the name) and then once they hit 2 to start harping on the child obesity crisis.

And then he started talking BMI. And the good stuff went bye-bye.

I hope you let him and his office know that this is why you are leaving them.

I think the other thing that is wrong with the BMI is that it doesn't account for age. My BMI says my ideal weight is approximately what I was in high school, which was fine for me back then. However, my 30 year old body is just not the same body.

ION, I just now woke up, and I only woke up because the phone rang. WTF? I know I have been in pain and tired lately, but this is ridiculous.

My BMI says my ideal weight is approximately what I was in high school, which was fine for me back then. However, my 30 year old body is just not the same body.

Oh, SO much this. 15 years ago my ideal BMI would have been spot-on, but that was before I hit 30 and had a kid. (Okay, I don't technically hit 30 for another 3 weeks. But still.)

Our pediatrician started giving us BMI (as a percentile; Casper was average IIRC, which I could have told you by eyeballing, but whatever) at 4. It's apparently pretty standard. They do have an age-appropriate adjusted ratio for children, of course, and I don't see that it's any different from them giving you percentiles of height/weight in your infant, is it?

For me it is, because with BMI, you have labels. Overweight, underweight, average, obese, etc. With percentiles, there is no associated label. 30th %ile means she's in the 30th %ile and there's no label that comes with that.

Digging through several years of clutter can be both deflating due to feelings of "where does all this crap come from" and uplifting due to "cool, I forgot I had this".

For me, "cool, I forgot I had this" moves quickly to "I still don't know where the fuck to put it."

By any standards I am obese, but my theoretical normal weight is a joke. I have my father's family's broad shoulders and big bones, which is working out for me in the osteoporosis area, but no where else. I put on the last 60 pounds about 10 years ago over the space of about three years before and after my knee surgeries. And no, I did not suddenly lock myself up 500 pounds of Halloween candy. Over the last year, through great effort, I have lost 10 pounds. At that rate, I'll be at my ideal rate around 2015.

After about a year of handing money by the thousands to my dentist and oral surgeon, I can has crown. I feels really weird to have a tooth there.

Ha! The little beast tried teasing Abby again and she hit her with the Clueless "Whatever."

Then the little beast said, "Oh, you're so gay, that's so Hannah Montana," and Abby was like "Whatever," and proceeded to hum to herself and read her book.