Our health & wellness program at work officially starts next week, so to prep for that, we did optional fitness assessments with our health & wellness folks today.
As expected, I have a high BMI and I'm still comfortably over 200 lbs. My body fat percentage is also average-to-high at 26-31% (the readout I thought I saw was 31%, but the calculator I just used calculates me at 26%).
Despite or because of these numbers, our two fitness trainers were a little stunned at how well I did on my one-minute timed tests. 40 pushups (yes, real ones. She counted 40, but I only count 38 cause the last two were lame) and 50 situps. My flexibility was apparently the best of the whole lot of folks who came before me (they only have two more assessments to go). My blood pressure came out higher than it does at the doctor's, but it's still well within the healthy range (138/72. My last one at the doc was 110/64 or something ridiculous like that). My resting heartrate also came out at 88, but I think he did it wrong because when we did the post step-test heartrate, it came up at 76, lower than my resting heartrate. Must have just been nerves.
When I finished the last part of it, the flexibility bit, R., our male trainer, watched me blow past his flexibility record and said, "What's your regular workout routine again? Wow."
On the one hand, I think some of the shock had to do with the assumption that plump people (particularly when you say "diabetes") aren't fit, on the other hand, from the sound of things, I just did pretty well straight up in general compared to other folks in the office, which is always surprising, even if I do workout a lot.
Wednesday we get our gym tour of the YMCA across the street, and our workouts start Monday. Mine's 1-2:30pm. The nice thing about a midday workout Monday and Weds is that it means I don't have to stay late at the gym those nights. I can get straight home, so my only late days will be Tues, Thurs and the Fridays I feel like going.
Frees up some time.
Which means... more time for writing!
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Health & Wellness: Surprise!
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7 comments so far. What are your thoughts?
What are you using for your body fat percentage calculation?
He used this do-hicky that you hold in your hands and calculates height? and something else, cause it has those heart-rate plates where your hands go.
I used this calculator: http://www.csgnetwork.com/bodyfatcalc.html
So cool that the gym is right across the street from where you work!
...right. That online calculator puts me at 19%; the last one I used put me at 32%. This shit is complete hoodoo, isn't it?
Jackie:
Yes.
Thought so.
(Most of them do come out in the low 30's for me. I'm more willing to buy into estimates that ask me for more than one dimension besides weight & height.)
I keep seeing "22% is a health body fat percentage for a woman; the average American woman has a body fat percentage of 32%." Again, how clever is a system that automatically puts the "average" American woman right up at the top of the "very unhealthy" bin?
(I must say, having been 2-sigma fat for most of my adolescent and adult life, I'm positively thrilled to finally have achieved "average".)
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