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

2»

Replies

  • DerangedPixi
    DerangedPixi Posts: 84 Member
    MireyGal76 wrote: »
    I. AM. CANADIAN.... er... confused.

    Height = feet and inches
    driving speed = km/h
    driving distance = kms
    weight = pounds
    running distance = miles
    swimming distance = miles
    drinks = ounces for hard liquor; everything else is usually Litres
    food measurements = sometimes grams, sometimes ounces depending on the label
    temperature = mostly Celsius... unless it's over 100F. hehe..

    essentially... I AM RANDOM AS HELL

    google conversion factors are my best friend.

    Dude...you run in miles and "mostly Celsius"!? Deletes from FB and MFP!!!!

    I.C.E. Cream Official Tester
    IKEA Professional Put Together-er
    Kickboxing Class Attender
    Been in fitness for about 2 years and have studied kitty-gif-ology, nutrition and Dinosaurs

    Might as well delete me from everything too because I do almost the exact same thing as this. haha
  • ColinsMommaOC
    ColinsMommaOC Posts: 296 Member
    I remember when the US was officially going to switch to metric. I think I was in middle school... They had us do all this extra work to teach us the new system. It was like a drop dead day - "On this day at this time we will switch all things!" - Yeah, that just plain didn't ever happen.
  • Escloflowne
    Escloflowne Posts: 2,038 Member
    VainFlake wrote: »
    MireyGal76 wrote: »
    I. AM. CANADIAN.... er... confused.

    Height = feet and inches
    driving speed = km/h
    driving distance = kms
    weight = pounds
    running distance = miles
    swimming distance = miles
    drinks = ounces for hard liquor; everything else is usually Litres
    food measurements = sometimes grams, sometimes ounces depending on the label
    temperature = mostly Celsius... unless it's over 100F. hehe..

    essentially... I AM RANDOM AS HELL

    google conversion factors are my best friend.

    Dude...you run in miles and "mostly Celsius"!? Deletes from FB and MFP!!!!

    I.C.E. Cream Official Tester
    IKEA Professional Put Together-er
    Kickboxing Class Attender
    Been in fitness for about 2 years and have studied kitty-gif-ology, nutrition and Dinosaurs

    Might as well delete me from everything too because I do almost the exact same thing as this. haha

    I guess it's because you guys are in the middle of Canada, that's where we send all our "broken" ones

    I.C.E. Cream Official Tester
    IKEA Professional Put Together-er
    Kickboxing Class Attender
    Been in fitness for about 2 years and have studied kitty-gif-ology, nutrition and Dinosaurs
  • giantrobot_powerlifting
    giantrobot_powerlifting Posts: 2,598 Member
    edited October 2015
    I remember when the US was officially going to switch to metric. I think I was in middle school... They had us do all this extra work to teach us the new system. It was like a drop dead day - "On this day at this time we will switch all things!" - Yeah, that just plain didn't ever happen.

    I remember that too. I was in third or fourth grade, maybe fifth.

    I use metric quite a bit in my job (I work with overseas manufacturers) and for my metric friends I try to do my best to convert the units. I do wish the United States would convert already, but yeah, this country gets all upset and bent out of shape if a woman should be featured on a bill.

    If I should ever leave this world alive....
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,603 Member
    edited October 2015
    I can think about food better in grams than ounces. I bake a lot and was weighing food items in grams before I began the weight loss journey. I have to translate from metric to my own damn system when it comes to food. If a cookbook says X number of ounces, I literally pull up a conversion chart to see how many grams that is to really get it. Liquid, though, in small amounts, I'm good on either system and can have a mental idea of it in the other system in small amounts because all of my liquid measuring stuff is labeled in both.

    I'm good on temperature in either system and can come pretty close to converting on my own, at least when it comes to temps from about 60 - 104 degrees. I can translate from 97-102F to the decimal in C without even thinking about it. I just know the conversions by rote. But I think of temps in F first. Kelvin, I would always have to do the math, but since I left school, nobody has ever tried to use or spoke to me in Kelvin.

    Pretty good on stones insofar as body weights go. I hear "14st, 7" and I don't have to convert. Not so good for, say, a car. I'd be converting. As far as body weight goes, I rather like the stone system, honestly. It took a while to grasp, when I first started hearing people tell me their weight in stones. The first time, I was like, "Stones?" I seriously thought I might be talking to a crazy person, lol. But after using it a lot, I like it. :)

    I'm really good on CM to inches and vice-versa when it's under 6".

    Distance, kind of. Up to 5K, I'm alright, over that, I'm doing math. Or maths. Why do you people pluralize math? Speak English! ;)
  • MireyGal76
    MireyGal76 Posts: 7,334 Member
    VainFlake wrote: »
    MireyGal76 wrote: »
    I. AM. CANADIAN.... er... confused.

    Height = feet and inches
    driving speed = km/h
    driving distance = kms
    weight = pounds
    running distance = miles
    swimming distance = miles
    drinks = ounces for hard liquor; everything else is usually Litres
    food measurements = sometimes grams, sometimes ounces depending on the label
    temperature = mostly Celsius... unless it's over 100F. hehe..

    essentially... I AM RANDOM AS HELL

    google conversion factors are my best friend.

    Dude...you run in miles and "mostly Celsius"!? Deletes from FB and MFP!!!!

    I.C.E. Cream Official Tester
    IKEA Professional Put Together-er
    Kickboxing Class Attender
    Been in fitness for about 2 years and have studied kitty-gif-ology, nutrition and Dinosaurs

    Might as well delete me from everything too because I do almost the exact same thing as this. haha

    I guess it's because you guys are in the middle of Canada, that's where we send all our "broken" ones

    I.C.E. Cream Official Tester
    IKEA Professional Put Together-er
    Kickboxing Class Attender
    Been in fitness for about 2 years and have studied kitty-gif-ology, nutrition and Dinosaurs

    We are not broken!!! It's a feature!

    We are cross platform compatible.
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
    I think for most Canadians, it's an age thing. My parents' generation thinks much more in the "old" system 'cause they learned miles, feet, inches and pounds in school. My generation learned metric, but we still grew up with parents who spoke imperial. Our kids' generation is much more exclusively metric.

    It's also an English/French thing, but I covered that in my last post. In French here in Quebec, it's 99.999% metric, both officially and colloquially.
  • giantrobot_powerlifting
    giantrobot_powerlifting Posts: 2,598 Member
    edited October 2015
    The only really downside to metrics when lifting, is the conversion to metric makes it seem like you lifted less.

    Sad Panda.
  • Artemiris
    Artemiris Posts: 189 Member
    If you study anything science-related, you must use the metric system. I think in the U.S.A. as well.

    I'm from Europe, so of course I think in cm and kg. BUT while dieting I sometimes set MFP in pounds because it takes less time to lose 1 pound than 1 kg. :grin:
  • robspot
    robspot Posts: 130 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    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.

    Lol, i did this as well. I used to watch the 5,000 metres and the 10,000 metres on the track and think jeez these races are so long it's crazy. And then I too did triathlon and I was like oh that's a 5k and a 10k.......

    I run in km/h because I can't visualise running distance in miles but I bike in miles per hour because km/h on the bike mean nothing to me! Makes my Garmin interesting.

    Weight is generally lbs, never kgs, but quite often stone because I've either got 5 stone to lose or 70lbs!!!

    I'm quite good at converting ounces to grams though, probably something to do with my misspent youth ;)
  • charlieandcarol
    charlieandcarol Posts: 302 Member
    I work with scientists from the USA (I'm Australian) and if I ask them something science related they talk metric. ie the field area we are working in is "1.5km by 2km", something weighs "2.6kg" or moved at "15km/hr" but if I ask them how far it is to the next town its "about 4 miles".

    When I comment on the mile thing they were like "Oh yeah you guys only do metric" like I was the freak when most of the rest of the world "does" metric officially.

    I am a cross over, I think in metric but my parents mostly do imperial so I can convert...except for the stone thing, I just can't visualise that.
  • MiloBloom83
    MiloBloom83 Posts: 2,724 Member
    segacs wrote: »
    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

    And yet, still the most awesome nation on the planet.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    Kalikel wrote: »
    Distance, kind of. Up to 5K, I'm alright, over that, I'm doing math. Or maths. Why do you people pluralize math? Speak English! ;)

    We don't pluralise, we just abbreviated Mathematics differently. Probably correctly.
This discussion has been closed.