Should I change my name?

@NovaEbike 181180 wrote:

Back in July of last year, I started commuting by bike for health reasons, I was (still am, but less so now) fat. I started with an e-bike but in April of this year I moved on to a non-assisted bike. I used an old xcross bike for a month while I convinced myself (and my wife) that I was strong enough to commute both ways 5 days a week in a reasonable timeframe to meet parental and work responsibilities and then had a NBD on the first day of Bike to Work week. I’ve since put about 2k miles on that new bike. In a moment of personal accomplishment, I got called a Clydesdale by a strava user a couple weeks ago after leading a peloton of riders from Columbia Pike to the 14st bridge. It made me feel much more giddy than is probably reasonable.

So do you think I should change my name? I lurk more than I post so I’m not losing a lot of post history or anything. When I started, I honestly thought I would forever be needing the assist of an ebike for my commute (close to 40 miles RT) so it seemed like a good moniker. It’s not that I’m ashamed of having ridden an ebike either, I will forever be a vocal proponent for them given my own experience and their ability to help someone completely sedentary make positive changes in their health. But at the same time, it no longer reflects me and always causes questions when I give my forum name which leads to this explanation every time. So it makes me think I should retire it. So, what would you do? Would you keep it or move on?

Sounds like you are/will be pretty happy either way, but if you do change it, all you have to do is drop the capital E and you’d be pretty much the same. Congrats, btw. Love stories like this.

That’s a great story, good to hear. We don’t know each other from Adam but even I’m proud of you!

If you choose to change and you’re having trouble coming up with a new name, I’m glad to help, I’m obviously really great at that.

You definitely weren’t fat when I met you a few months ago. I think the mods have the ability to change names. I’m a big fan of using first names. I get to say, “hi I’m Judd. I’m Judd on the forums.”

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@lordofthemark 181218 wrote:

Good luck with your goals. I was already well down from obese before getting into biking, but got down from overweight (or was it just below overweight, I forget?) to right in the middle of “normal” and perhaps more importantly, got all my cholesterol numbers down where they needed to be (and lowered my blood sugar too, despite all those coffee club muffins and cookies. Not saying it works for everyone, but the potential for gains is quite real.

Lordofthemark, I would NEVER have guessed you’d ever been anything other than slim. Hats off to you!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@NovaEbike 181216 wrote:

Thanks Judd, my BMI is still about 15 lbs north of the “obese” line and then I’d have another 40 or so to get out of the “overweight” category. Realistically, if I can get below 200 hundred I’d be happy.

Don’t let those BMI Nazis get you down. It’s very difficult to get out of the “overweight” category when you have developed massive thighs from biking.

Also, tall people are discriminated against by the BMI formula. When you think about it, if you expand an object equally in all dimensions, the volume of the solid object expands by the cube of any one dimension. If “normal” people expand their girth and width as they grow taller, then the BMI formula would say that one’s ideal weight is proportional to the cube of one’s height. The current formula uses the square of one’s height.

@jrenaut 181235 wrote:

BMI is meant to measure a population, not individuals. According to BMI, for example, LeBron James is overweight.

So why then do Doctors keep applying it to individuals?

@creadinger 181237 wrote:

So why then do Doctors keep applying it to individuals?

Because not that many people are tall enough for the inaccuracy to make much difference, esp compared to the fuzziness as to exactly at what point on the BMI (or modified BMI) scale health problems really kick in, I guess? But never having gone to the doctor as a tall person, its difficult for me to say how doctors communicate these issues with tall people.