This time the topic is BODPOD and BMI.
As I previously said, I discovered the BODPOD and promptly got myself booked in. I was lucky, they only let members of the public use it for one afternoon a month and it's booked up for months. It's a wonderfully simple concept, you get into a small chamber - the POD - and it uses air displacement to measure your body composition. Combined with highly accurate medical scales the BODPOD can give you an accurate picture of your body make up that's second only to a water displacement test or a full body MRI. Since I don't know where I can get the water displacement done and there's no way I can afford a full body MRI, the BODPOD was the next best thing.
I wanted to know how accurate my home scales are and what I should really be aiming for when it comes to my goal weight.
So on Friday off I toddled to Coventry Hospital to get measured. The nurses were super friendly and helpful and the process completely painless.
I had to put on a swimming costume and I was given a super sexy (!) swimming cap. My height and weight were measured and then I stepped into an egg:
See, egg.I had to sit still for a minute (blissful, as anyone with two little chargers in the home will understand), then they opened it up again and checked I was okay before doing it again.
That done, I got changed and by the time I was again dressed the results were in.
Now before you pass judgement on FraidyKat , please note that I have been trying really hard this year and I have managed to lose 23kg so far - I'd call it baby weight, but let's honest, there were a lot of chocolate bars and chips there too - and I plan on losing a lot more before I am done.
So, the results:
FraidyKat weighs 83.3kg
Of that 30.3kg is fat and 53kg is lean mass (the rest).
So I am 36.4% fat
According to the sheet they gave me that puts me in the Excess Fat category (31-40%), but thankfully clear of Risky.
For the record the categories for women are:
Risky (high body fat) - >40% Needs to lose fat (obese)
Excess Fat - 31-40% Excess, could lose but not dangerous
Moderately Lean - 23-30% Generally health
Lean - 19-22% Generally considered excellent for health
Ultra Lean - 15-18% Elite Athlete Level
Risky (low body fat) - <15% Under weight, not healthy
(For men, subtract 10% from each category)
Oh how I want to be Lean.
Lots of numbers here to process but please bear with me while I tell you how this makes a mockery of BMI...
At present, at 83.3kg, my BMI is 28.8 (it was 36.6 last December).
To be healthy my BMI should be between 18.5 and 25. At minimum that means I have to lose 10.8kg, at maximum I can lose 29.8kg.
Hang on a second, from the BODPOD I know that mt fat % equates to 30kg. I would have to lose 8kg of lean mass to be healthy at the bottom of the "Healthy" BMI range.
At the highest healthy BMI of 25 my weight should be 72.5. Assumed I only lost fat (a big ask but I am trying to go slow and steady while working out so theoretically possible), I would end up somewhere around 27% fat, perfectly healthy.
You have to remember that for my height, the supposedly healthy BMI range is 19kg (2st 13lb in Church of England), 53.5-72.5kg, that's the same as a fully packed holiday suitcase!
In short:
Healthy by BMI: 53.5-72.5kg
Healthy by Fat %: 62.35-75.7kg (assuming lean mass is all retained)
That's 9kg (1st 6lb) difference in my minimum healthy weight and yet BMI is so often seen as the be all and end all of health equations.
When did we all stop being people and start being statistics?
I'm hardly a body builder and my build isn't massively different to everyone elses and yet there's so much inbuilt inaccuracy in a method of measuring health that so many people see as gospel it's eye watering.
FraidyKat Runs - From BMI
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