pounds vs kilos - geek alert! Anyone switched units after using this forum?

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hamlet1222
hamlet1222 Posts: 459 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I used to think entirely in kilos, but since joining this forum am increasingly thinking in lbs. The 1lb measure does seem to be a nice small but tangible unit for body weight and for dumbbell/barbell weights. When using kilos you invariably have to start going decimal and talking about 0.5 kilos.

Doing maths with kilos is of course a lot easier, and I'd never weigh food in anything other than grams.

I notice a lot of Americans talk about x grams of protein per lb of body weight (actually mixing the units!), is this a standard convention? Are ounces too tricky? or is it about food labelling?
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  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    edited October 2015
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    Our food labels have macronutrients listed in grams so we stick with grams when talking about them. Many food labels these days have servings listed like 1 cup and then the grams are in parentheses beside them. And on the front of a package you might see the total weight in ounces and then in grams or sometimes liters (liquids obviously) next to that.

    I've gotten good at multiplying by 14 because of people using stones.
  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,652 Member
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    No. Kilos are like Spanish to me. I can grasp them, but I still have to convert them to and from pounds for them to make any sense.

    A gram per pound is easier than 1/28th of an ounce per pound, even for the non-metric.
  • hamlet1222
    hamlet1222 Posts: 459 Member
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    yep, lots of brits still use stones, I grew up using them, but they are a terribly coarse unit for our purposes
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    I find it really hard to think in stones. By that I mean that I can think of 150 pounds and have an idea of what that looks like. I can think of 68 kg and have an idea of what that looks like. But 10s10 makes me go "huh?" until I multiply it out.
  • suziecue20
    suziecue20 Posts: 567 Member
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    hamlet1222 wrote: »
    yep, lots of brits still use stones, I grew up using them, but they are a terribly coarse unit for our purposes

    Yes o.k but when you've lost a whole STONE in weight it seems so much more than 14lbs B)

  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    I'm Canadian so we're in that weird in-between space. Technically, everything in Canada is metric and we officially measure in centimeters and kilos. But colloquially, at least in English Canada, most of us still think in pounds and inches for weight and height -- even though we've been metric since I was a little kid. I live in Quebec and notice that most francophone Quebecers think in kilos and centimetres.

    Food is all in grams and millilitres, though. I don't understand ounces and never have. They don't make intuitive sense to me. Same with distance, like on a run, which I always, always think of in kilometers, never miles.
  • LovingLife_Erin
    LovingLife_Erin Posts: 328 Member
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    I live in the UK (although originally from Canada), and am not a fan of stones. Last night I told a couple people that I'd love 100+ lbs and the one lady had no clue what that meant until they figured out how many stones it was. 7 stones just doesn't sound as impressive as 100 lbs does!
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    Stones make no sense. At all.

    (Sorry, Brits...)
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    segacs wrote: »
    I'm Canadian so we're in that weird in-between space. Technically, everything in Canada is metric and we officially measure in centimeters and kilos. But colloquially, at least in English Canada, most of us still think in pounds and inches for weight and height -- even though we've been metric since I was a little kid. I live in Quebec and notice that most francophone Quebecers think in kilos and centimetres.

    Food is all in grams and millilitres, though. I don't understand ounces and never have. They don't make intuitive sense to me. Same with distance, like on a run, which I always, always think of in kilometers, never miles.

    See, and to me the miles and feet are intuitive. It's probably just because it's what we're used to. I like that feet are divided up into 12 inches and those are divided by 8. It makes the math fun instead of working all in tenths.
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    See, and to me the miles and feet are intuitive. It's probably just because it's what we're used to. I like that feet are divided up into 12 inches and those are divided by 8. It makes the math fun instead of working all in tenths.

    Don't you mean it makes the math needlessly confusing? Hehe.

    You Americans always needing to be different... :)

    map_of_countries_that_dont_.png
  • Mycophilia
    Mycophilia Posts: 1,225 Member
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    America you crazy.

    q8s7ylml5a8p.jpg
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    Oh yeah, that's another one I forgot to mention. Fahrenheit makes no sense to me whatsoever. I think exclusively in Celsius.
  • MarziPanda95
    MarziPanda95 Posts: 1,326 Member
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    Before I came here I thought entirely in stone. I knew that a stone was 14lbs but I didn't know what, say 210lbs looked like. I knew what 15st looked like. Now I'm the opposite... if someone tells me they weigh 20st I won't get the visulistion until I convert it into 280bs. Kg on the other hand... still stump me :D
  • suziecue20
    suziecue20 Posts: 567 Member
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    Then there's furlongs (220 yards - used in horse racing UK) Rods, perches and poles - 5 1/2 yards 16 1/2 feet 1/320 of a mile and 1/4 of a chain. I had to learn all that guff when I was at school. Kids have it easy these days with metric lol.
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    suziecue20 wrote: »
    Then there's furlongs (220 yards - used in horse racing UK) Rods, perches and poles - 5 1/2 yards 16 1/2 feet 1/320 of a mile and 1/4 of a chain. I had to learn all that guff when I was at school. Kids have it easy these days with metric lol.

    OMFG.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited October 2015
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    hamlet1222 wrote: »
    I used to think entirely in kilos, but since joining this forum am increasingly thinking in lbs. The 1lb measure does seem to be a nice small but tangible unit for body weight and for dumbbell/barbell weights. When using kilos you invariably have to start going decimal and talking about 0.5 kilos.

    Doing maths with kilos is of course a lot easier, and I'd never weigh food in anything other than grams.

    I notice a lot of Americans talk about x grams of protein per lb of body weight (actually mixing the units!), is this a standard convention? Are ounces too tricky? or is it about food labelling?

    It's probably because ounces are too large, but food is typically given in grams (as an alternative to the cup size, often) and macro numbers are almost always referred to in grams.

    I prefer grams for weighing and now can understand what x grams of some food I eat regularly means as well (or better) than an ounce reference. I still have to convert kg and km to lbs and miles mathematically, though. (I lift using kg sometimes and run various kilogram measured races, but it's still not intuitive to me. For weight I like lbs better, because they are smaller but not too small (but on the other hand height in centimeters seems weird to me -- obviously this is about what I'm used to).

    It does lead to funny hybrids, sometimes -- sometimes I use kg weights on a 35 lb bar. At least it keeps my basic math skills from getting rusty.
  • pondee629
    pondee629 Posts: 2,469 Member
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    Kinda like running a 5k race at an 11:30 mile pace?

    I did enjoy, while in Aruba, buying cold cuts by the kilo, reminiscent of a certain culture from my college days. Give me a half key of the swiss, man.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    edited October 2015
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    Mycophilia wrote: »
    America you crazy.

    q8s7ylml5a8p.jpg

    I never think of 1760 yards in a mile. I think of it as 5280 feet in a mile :smiley:
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    I never think of 1760 yards in a mile. I think of it as 5280 feet in a mile :smiley:

    I did not know either of those numbers and wouldn't ever bother to learn them, TBH. There are 1000 meters in a kilometer. That's simple enough.

    And I have no idea how fast I run a mile. I do know I can run about a 6- or 7- minute kilometer though.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    I never think of 1760 yards in a mile. I think of it as 5280 feet in a mile :smiley:

    Me too. I've told this story before, but I will again.

    Some years ago, before my first triathlon, I got up in the middle of the night and could not sleep (I had to leave around 4:30 anyway), and so tried to calm myself by watching the summer olympics, which were then on. Half asleep (but used to the various conversions between metric and imperial due to my training), I saw what seemed to be a longer running race and decided that was something to watch. It was 5000 meters, which of course meant nothing to me. So I thought -- a meter is basically a yard, so that's about 15000 feet or about 3 miles -- oh! it's a 5K. Followed immediately by the thought: oh, right, of course 5000 meters is 5K.

    Only in America.

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