When I started eating plants (instead of critters) a year ago, I pretty quickly lost about ten pounds (from 155 to 145). Friends still comment from time to time but my physician is fine with my weight and I feel good so I don’t give it a lot of thought. But this post on the Personal Capital blog made (what I thought were) some interesting points.

If you take a look at the weight for the top tennis players, they pretty much all fit in the weight chart ranges above. And if you look up 6 foot tall NBA guards such as Allen Iverson, Aaron Brooks, Luke Ridnour, Sebastain Telfair, and TJ Ford, they all weigh between 155 – 167 lbs as well. Of course none of us are world class professional athletes, but at least we know the charts have veracity.

According to a Gallup Poll, American men are weighing in at an average of 196 pounds today — 16 pounds more than in 1990. The average weight for women jumped 14 pounds to 156 pounds over the same period (neither sexes have gotten much taller since). Given the average height for an American man is 5′ 10″ and the average height for an American woman is 5′ 3″, Americans on average are 20-35 pounds heavier than the ideal weight.

According to the “ideal weight” chart in the post I’m on the low end for my body type (146- 157). Some might consider those ten pounds “head room,” but I prefer to think of them as “ass room.”