An interesting week just passed me by. Everyone at work has been offered discounted health insurance premiums by agreeing to a HEALTH RISK ASSESSMENT. This evil little test is bound to find something wrong with you, no matter how healthy you think you are. Do you wear your seat belt every time, do you smoke, what is your cholesterol number? And if you are perfect with those readings, how dare you lift heavy objects with your back instead of your legs????
Oh my, was this the talk of the office. We had to fast, God forbid. We had to give a blood sample; needles, yuck. Blood pressures were checked, questionnaires were completed, and the body fat electrodes spit out that gross number, glaring in our faces, letting us know exactly how much fat our poor bones are lugging around. But even that wasn't the worst of it.
Of course the scale made an appearance, that dreaded apparatus that reminds us why we hate to wash our jeans for fear of them feeling so tight again. The girl who assessed me might have weighed 110 pounds. So I convinced myself that at lunch hour, she would be outside chain smoking with a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew, calling her baby daddy and screaming at him for not coming home last night. Was that too harsh?
Once you have been weighed, your height and weight are put into an equation and the result is a very special number, the BMI. That acronym gets tossed around a lot but how many of you know what it means? It stands for Body Mass Index and it's a number that tells you whether your weight is healthy or whether you could drop dead tomorrow. A healthy BMI falls somewhere between 18 and 24.9. Mine was not in that range.
Below 18, you're bound to drop dead when your heart stops beating because you are no longer giving it enough fuel and you seem to disappear when people view you from a side profile. 25-30, where I am not-so-contently sitting, is the place for the pleasantly plump, the "overweight", the folks who are chubby but not about to drop dead. Over 30 gets dicey and, I guess, is cause for concern as you don't want the cardiac problems to come from clogged arteries.
I have one particular friend who spent her entire week mulling this over. I almost had to sedate her when I caught her sending me Facebook messages at 6 AM, questioning whether she was now just a "frumpy middle aged woman." It was time for us all to get a grip.
It's good to know your BMI and you can easily plug your height and weight into a BMI calculator on one of countless weight loss web sites. Once you know what that number is, you must be responsible with it. Use it as a guide. It cannot dictate your life. There are people walking around with BMI's of 23 who look great on the outside. I'm sure many of them are really healthy. But I have a sneaking suspicion that some of them smoke 2 packs a day. I'll take my BMI any day, which by the way, is hovering between 25 and 26. I'm working on it.
Sure, if you're BMI is over 30, you should be considering a plan of action for reducing it. Setting a goal is a good place to start, but by all means, make that goal realistic. Someone whose BMI is 38 should not be striving for an 18. Strive for what will make you healthy and feel better and the BMI will follow.
My guess is we'll all be doing this again next year. Anything to pay less for health insurance. Yes, of course I hope my BMI is lower. For the record, I hope my friend's is lower too because I can't take another week of her being that preoccupied! (Love ya Tam) I'm still eating pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. WITH whipped cream. And no BMI test would stop me from doing that!
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