Self-image 3: body stats

Yesterday Harish, my personal trainer, did my body stats for the second time. He has a machine that gives you your weight, body fat percentage, water percentage, muscle weight and bone weight. Then he takes your blood pressure, your resting heart rate and does your peak flow; then he takes measurements. Then he explains what the stats mean. This happens every 3-4 weeks. It’s quite interesting. Here are mine for today:

Weight: +2.5lb

Yes, that’s right. I’d gained 2.5lb after three weeks of careful eating and seriously hard work in the gym. It is fair to say that I was a bit upset. Plus, I’ve had personal trainers before and the slightest weight gain tended to result in a bit of a lecture, as did any food diary containing any dairy or carbohydrate produce whatsoever.

I braced myself.

“This is good,” Harish said, beaming. “Really good.”

“Are you on crack?” I asked suspiciously. “You don’t look like you’re on crack.”

“Hahahaha. No. You’ll see what I mean when we go through the rest of your stats, which are just behind this readmore tag.”

Body fat percentage: 47.4, down from 48.5

“Body fat down 1.1%. That’s brilliant,” Harish said. “You have to remember: it’s excess fat you don’t want. And of course you will remember that I explained to you last time that 48.5% is actually not as high as it sounds, because an acceptable body fat percentage for a woman would be around 25-31% of her total weight anyway.”

“I do, Harish. But I am glad you mentioned that because my blog readers were not there when we did this the first time and they are probably thinking that I must be some kind of freakish half-woman-half-blubber person.”

“No problem, Katy. And I love how uncontrived our conversations are.”

“Thank you.”

“No - thank you. Now, you are probably wondering how it is that you can lose 1.1% of body fat yet gain 2.5lb overall. Let’s have a look at your muscle weight, bone weight and water percentage.”

Muscle weight: +4lb; bone weight: +0.5lb; water percentage: 38.8, up from 37.9

“This is why body stats are so important. The scales tell you you’ve gained 2.5lb, but they don’t tell you what you’ve gained. Your weight is made up of muscle, fat, bone and water, so the what is very important. See, you’ve gained 4lb in muscle, 0.5lb in bone mass and something from increased water too. That’s what we want. When you first start exercising you build muscle very quickly and your bone density increases, which is why people often find that they either gain or don’t lose weight overall if they’ve just started working out. You also automatically start to drink more, which is why your water percentage has gone up, although you are still slightly dehydrated. Are you drinking more water? Didn’t you make some kind of big fanfare hooha resolution on Monday to do just that?”

“I, er -”

“Whatever. Try harder. Anyway, I don’t expect the muscle or bone masses to get much higher from here. Maybe a bit. We want to maintain those figures. The thing to take away, though, is that you have actually gained almost 5lb in muscle, bone and water since the last session - and yet overall you’ve only put on 2.5lb.”

Harish looked at me expectantly. I looked back at him blankly. I might have been gurning.

“What it means,” he said slowly and carefully, “is that you must have lost a couple of pounds of fat, which is what you want to lose; it’s just that you’ve gained muscle and bone density at the same time, which is why overall you’ve gained weight.”

“Uh huh,” I said vaguely.

“It’s maths.”

“Right. Yes. I see,” I said. “I mean, my readers will totally get this bit, anyway.”

“Some of them,” I added uncertainly.

“And that’s why it’s important not to worry about the scales. I do not want you to weigh yourself at home. Your overall weight doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. If you keep working at this and eating sensibly, you will lose lots of weight - but that’s a side effect, because we’re going to go by the body fat percentage. For me, it doesn’t matter what you weigh at the end of this if your body fat percentage is right. You might be within your BMI, you might be a couple of stone over. It doesn’t matter, because you’ll be healthy inside where it counts.”

There was more good news. My blood pressure had gone down from 136/86 (although I did drink a cup of coffee on the morning of the session last time) to 126/76, and my resting pulse had gone down from 75 to 71. My peak flow was normal for someone of my age, unlike bloody Wendy who has the peak flow of a 19 year old. DAMN YOU WENDERS.

And then we took my measurements, and you know what?

Virtually unchanged. Seriously. Half an inch off my neck - which has never looked particularly fat to me, if I’m honest - and half an inch off my waist. And that’s it. Nothing off my thighs, despite the fact that I can see that they are in better shape in the mirror; nothing off my biceps, nothing off my calves, nothing off my hips.

I’m not bothered. Honestly, I cannot remember the last time I felt so good about my body. I posted this to make what I think is a really important point: most diets rely heavily on what you weigh. I know that Weight Watchers does. Some diets also suggest measurements - the received wisdom at Weight Watchers was that if you were working out and hadn’t cheated on the diet and you hadn’t lost any weight or had gained some that week, you should measure yourself because you might have lost inches instead.

So if I’d been doing WeightWatchers, I’d have weighed myself and found that I’d gained 2.5lb and lost half an inch round my waist and nowhere else. And I would have been pretty fucking depressed. I would have found very little to be positive about there. What I think this shows is that the scales AND the tape measure don’t always know what else is going on. I’m eating really well, and I feel really good, and I can really see that I’m starting to change things for the better inside, where it counts.

And, well, that’s it, really. I’d love to think of an inspirational ending to this post, but I’ve sort of already done the exciting bit. So. HIT YOUR SCALES WITH A BIG MALLET. Or, you know, buy really expensive ones that tell you your body fat and that. Er. Yeah. That is all.