My BMI

A week ago Monday I showed up at the gym to get my Body Mass Index (BMI) officially measured. It was costing me $10 but the results would finally put my mind at ease and so was worth it. You see, over a year ago I signed up with a website called http://www.calledsparkpeople.com/ to track my calories consumed while eating and burned while exercising to see if I could lose the weight that I felt was plaguing me. Spark people suggested that people of my height should weigh anywhere from 100-130 lbs. At the time I weighed 155 lbs and felt that 135 was a plausible goal.

And so I began the hard work of tracking every morsel of food that went in my mouth and every step I took in cardio exercise. I added lifting weights to my exercise repertoire and measured my hips, waste, and neck so I could track the inches I lost (because muscle weighs more than fat so weight is not always a good indication of how your health is increasing). I began to add more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to my diet and controlled my portions a lot better (like eating 2 cookies instead of 16).

I swear the first 10 lbs melted off like butter; it was exciting and fun and I felt skinny and sexy. The next 5 were a little bit more difficult (cuz I moved from a house with no junk food to a house with girls who can bake some darn good cookies). The last 5 were pretty much impossible and then summer started and I didn’t want to bother with trying to lose weight, doing outdoor adventure stuff, and working with teenagers all at once so the weight loss was put on hold.

As summer came to a close I found that I had only gained 2 lbs. I was excited to get back to work and lose the last 7 lbs to finally reach my goal weight.

But weeks, and then months went by and that last 7 lbs has proven to be very stubborn. I tried hard to cut back on what I was eating but every time I did I found I was hungry. Really, 7 lbs is not worth being hungry and cranky for and anyway I don’t really think going hungry in order to lose a few pounds is all that smart.

My friends have been telling me I look great and have gone so far as to say that if I lost any more weight I would be too skinny (to which I still must respond, “Yeah, right.”). My feelings have been mixed: am I not trying hard enough to get these last lbs off or is 135 lbs an unreasonable goal for me? I finally decided to get my BMI measured and answer the question that way.

When I say I got my BMI measured I am saying that a professional did a test to figure out how much of my body was made up of fat. About 5 years ago I had the skin fold test done and my trainer told me I was 30% fat (which is considered obese). At Club Fit they use the Bioelectric Impedance method, which is not nearly as painful as it sounds. It’s a picky test so I couldn’t eat or drink beforehand but still had to be hydrated, had to be well-rested, couldn’t work out before hand and had to take off all my jewelry. Claire, the nice trainer girl who was helping me, put some sort of magnetic strip things on my hands and feet and then sent an electric current through my body. The machine measured how long it took for the current to get from one end to the other and then spit out a number. We took that number back to the computer, entered it along with my height, gender, and weight, and out popped my body fat percentage.

As we did all this, Claire was telling me about the program and explaining that my results would be saved in the computer so I could be tested again in the future and compare the results with the ones from today to see how much fat I’d… “Oh, you’re 20.9% fat. That’s really good. Healthy body fat for women ranges from 18% to 25%.” She seemed surprised by the results. I was surprised by the results!

I was so surprised by the results, I walked back to the locker room and cried. I was sure I would measure between 26 and 29%. And to think I was feeling like such a failure for not getting that last 7 lbs off!

It’s been a week now and I’m still processing these results. I’ve heard many people throughout my life say that those weight charts weren’t accurate for everyone but I thought they were just trying to find excuses. I just looked up one of those weight charts and it told me I should weigh between 99 and 121 lbs. Could you imagine me at 99 lbs?! I guess my bone structure really is that different, and I’m not just trying to find excuses for my size!

But everyday I have the nagging worry that Claire did something wrong or I was dehydrated or my stomach wasn’t empty enough or something else happened to mess with the results and that I really am still over weight.

My whole life I have lived in hopes that I was not the girl who didn’t fit into the weight charts. I wanted to lose weight and be slim and pretty. Now I don’t care; now I just wish no one had created a mold that we all had to force ourselves into. I’m healthy! What more can I ask for? Yet it’s going to take a long time to actually believe it. I’m so used to seeing myself as the chubby girl.