Last night I was trying to waste time online and on Livestrong I came across their body fat calculator, which utterly failed to work. So I looked around online and tried a few different ones, including one claiming to be the "Most Accurate" -- though I think that means if you use some of their other techniques than just using measurements. In any case, using waist and hip measurements (and even two different waists, for one) and neck, and weight, my body fat percentage came out to be around 35-36%. EVERY time. This put me well into the "obese" category by these websites. Now, I'm not very good at measuring myself; I get slightly different answers every time. Everything is so squishy and floppy. Except on the neck. The website said the US average for women is 32% -- I find it highly unlikely that I'm above average on this, given that I'm NOT, technically, overweight. So this leads me to conclude that my body is storing the vast majority of my fat at my middle and skewing the body fat results -- not really a comforting thought, since middle fat means heart disease is more likely (do they consider if you've had a baby or not, and how much scar tissue you have on your belly?), but maybe I'm not really mid-30s on body fat. I'm also high on waist-to-hip ratio, or at least marginally high.
I'm sorely tempted to sign up for a body fat analysis at the gym just to get something more accurate. But they don't do immersion and I don't really want someone prodding my wobbly bits. It would be too depressing. And then they'd know. And I'd rather keep my blobbiness to myself (or at least away from strangers). And then they'd tell me to eat more protein and exercise more, which isn't really news. So I there's really no point to getting it done, except mere curiosity, and I hate to waste money on mere curiosity.
My weight was 151 this morning. It leaped up over the course of the week (I did say last week's was a fluke, after all) and hasn't gone down much. I have exercised regularly (only missed Friday and Sunday) and eaten pretty low-calorie (except for Sunday). I have recorded my measurements so I can see if they're going down, anyway.
I'm disappointed that I didn't get under 150 to stay before Easter (I may yet, but this is the last official weigh-in day). But I do think I'm making progress on fitness, and I'm excited about having a goal.
1 comment:
I just did a few of those calculators out of curiosity and they had me at 29% (I liked that one!) to 32.56%. So, pretty normal but not quite healthy. I was astounded to find out that the difference between my waist size at the smallest point and at my navel is four inches! I have my waist, and then I have all the fat and loose skin from having babies. Yuck. Even when I was 130 pounds I still had all that loose skin hanging around, even with most of the fat gone. The two waist measurement scale is the one that put me at 32.56% body fat.
I had a "real" measurement done back in college using the caliper method and my body fat was only 18% then. That was when I weighed 120 pounds and was rowing, so it was no surprise.
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