30 Day Fitness Challenge - Day 27

(Note: This is day 27 in a 30 day series. If you like these posts, subscribe to the Mumbo Jumbo RSS feed at the top of the page!)

Day 27

My Thoughts:

Weight isn’t always the best way to judge your level of fitness. BMI or Body Mass Index is better, but even that can be off. For instance, big athletes who are in good shape could fall into an “Obese” category, because the equation is a ratio of weight to height. If you have a lot of muscle, it can throw this off. So what’s a better way to measure these things?

3 Days Left

Percentages. That’s the simple answer. The lengthy answer is learning how to determine your percentages of body fat, water weight, muscle mass, and bone mass. It used to be that this information was really hard to get. You’d have to undergo the uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing process of someone grabbing folds of your skin, pulling it out, and measuring it with calipers.

Lucky for us, you no longer need to go to such lengths. In fact, this information is pretty easy to obtain. You just need the right kind of scale.

Now, for this past father’s day, my siblings and I decided to grab a Bowflex brand scale. The scale has electrodes on it’s top surface that go against the bare skin of your feet. It sends a little electrical signal through your skin, measuring its impedance to determine your body fat percentage, bone mass, water weight, among other things. It’s a lot more information than a regular scale and it was only 60 dollars - a relatively cheap way to monitor your health and take preventative action.

Now don’t skip over that last statement. Excess body fat is proven to contribute to all sorts of otherwise preventable diseases. These include diabetes, cancer, and heart heart disease among other things like decreased quality of life. The kicker is that all these things are entirely preventable! You just have to know how to prevent them.

You see, people expect to go to a doctor when they are sick and get some kind of miracle shot or pill and be all better, but it doesn’t work that way! Health care in America could be more aptly named “Sick Care.” Conversely, if you care for your health, you take preventative measures to make sure you stay healthy, to the best of your ability. So what would you rather have; open heart surgery, or years of health from nutrition and fun exercise, vigilantly monitored and maintained by the right tools and knowledge?

(Hint: If that is a tough one for you to answer, you shouldn’t be reading this page.)

Pre-Workout Stats

Using that great scale gave me some good insight into my level of health.

I’m 172.4 lbs total.

9.7 lbs of bone.

74.7 lbs of muscle.

60.7 percent water.

and 13.8% body fat. (as long as I didn’t read any of that off the scale wrong…)

15% is what an “average” male my age should have. Athletic falls from 6 to 13 percent. According to Wikipedia, I’m within the “Fitness” range. A little more lost weight and I’ll have a six pack!

You don’t want to go under 6 percent. My friend knew this all star track runner in college who took his body fat down too low. His body had so little fat that he snapped his Achilles tendon while running. You could damage yourself similarly if you go too low.

The Workout:

I’m pretty sure you can handle that.

Closing Thoughts:

If you want to gain an edge in your training and understanding of your health, I cannot stress enough the importance of looking beyond your weight. You body is a complex array of systems that interact with each other. The better you understand them, the more you are able to take care of them and the less you will need to go to the doctor for sick care.

I’ll be fasting starting tonight (which is Wednesday) until Friday morning when I do my last workout in the challenge. 30 days! It’s been a heckuva ride and I’m looking foward to many more!