Monday, December 16, 2013

Gym Time... Fitness Assessment! Dun Dun Dun..... The scary numbers are in... and published!

Hey there everyone! I just had a fabulous Sunday at my first Holiday Showcase! I am going to tell you all about it I promise! I just have a lot of information to process and I never did tell you about my Fitness Assessment which is just as important to this life as getting back on the floor is.....

So for those of you that are new here, a big part of what Ballroom Dancing does for me, and part of what I write about, is that Dancing allows me to put into perspective other things in my life that I generally tend to avoid... like... the gym, or really pushing myself during a workout, or maybe it's a fear of going to the clothing store to try stuff on because I know I'll hate what I look like. Or maybe I'll not approach someone I need to talk to. Since I had started Ballroom Dancing all of that became easier. When I stopped Ballroom Dancing...after a while...it all got harder again.

So back to the gym... I belong to a gym...which I have dutifully been attending 3x a week. It's a very nice gym and as far as gyms go I really like it a lot. As a new member of this facility they offer a free Fitness Assessment that has to be taken within the first 3 months of membership... well my third month just started and I hadn't scheduled my Fitness Assessment yet. Why you ask? Because I didn't want to face the ugly truth of the real numbers!

A Fitness Assessment includes: Height, Weight, BMI, Flexibility, Hip to Waist measurement and ratio, Blood Pressure, Strength, and a Cardiovascular fitness test. Yeah...pffft... I hadn't really been on the scale since I joined the gym and THAT number was enough to keep me going to the gym, and pretend the scales weren't there. I was really close to my pre-dancing weight. I have some people in my life who like to occasionally remind me that they think my heart is going to give out on me at any moment (if you hear something enough you start to believe it) and I've done enough research in diet and nutrition to know that the rest of my numbers are not going to be good. Who wants to face that? DENIAL is oh so much more than a river in Egypt!

The same week I had my lesson with Steve, you know... last week. ;-) I got an e-mail from Z at my gym, he's a Personal Trainer and holds degrees in the things that really fit fitness minded people get when they want to do this type of work for a living. Anyway... he e-mailed to let me know that my time was running out and did I want to schedule. No, I didn't, but since I was back in the ballroom and Steve and I have agreed to get me back on the better path I thought better of it and scheduled.

I met Z at 9:45 in the morning... I... am... not...a...morning....person. And he was a cute little fresh out of college looking guy, this didn't improve my morning persona or my nerves because now... I felt old. My main concern when working with a personal trainer is that I be treated like a human and not like a fat human. Believe you me there is a certain way that overweight people get treated sometimes that would really just blow your mind. Z was very awesome about treating me like a human, who was there for her fitness assessment. :-)

We started with BP... high side of the normal range, but then I was nervous and I did talk through part of it. Then on to waist to hip ratio... I was brave, I told him he could tell me the numbers so I could keep track, I have been measured for things in the past and never once looked at the numbers. Well by default (because most people don't want to see them) he didn't show them to me.

I was really nervous... I kept talking, and then yelling at myself not to talk...and occasionally my inner monologue became my outer monologue (It's never good when that happens). Somehow through the course of it all I found out that his parents made him take Ballroom lessons for 2 years when he was in high school... the world needs more parents like his! :-) 

Next up height and weight... now I've been the same 5'10.25" since I was 16 at least... so I lined up against the wall, I tried to channel my inner dancer person and stand up straight. I was in stocking feet, and I made Z measure me twice.... because he had me logged at a full on 5'11"!!! Grrrrr.... tall girls have it kind of rough, and tall fat girls have it even rougher.... I do NOT want to be taller!! On the up side I'm pretty sure that it was the Ballroom that helped my posture which accounts for the height.

Next up... weight... now I was a little nervous.... although I know I'd lost weight... all of my jeans and pants had been falling off of me for weeks (once literally while I was coming up the outside stairs of my apartment and yes, there were neighbors to witness it!) and over the last month or so, anyone that didn't see me on a daily basis was commenting that I looked like I'd lost some weight. One never does really know if that's politeness or actual observation. So I got on the fancy pants scale and waited...

Here's what I'll tell you (and after having my weight printed in a national magazine once, and before that being on OPRAH with my Mom talking about sex, what I share now isn't quite as big a deal for me as it might be for you to see it) At my highest point this year I was hovering around 360lbs.... yep... well over the size of two people... I'm aware. When I started at the gym I was around 340lbs which is pretty much my start weight in 2006 when I started dancing the first time. I figured (because my pants falling off in public wasn't a big enough clue) that I was about the same, maybe maybe I was 330lbs. I have a terrible time, as do most women, losing weight around my middle... and that also happens to be where I carry most of my weight, so unless I see a big change there, I disregard the fact that my butt has gone completely missing as a sign of weight loss. So anyway... I'm waiting for this number and I'm prepared for anything he has to say... he asked me what my top weight was... I told him... he said (because I couldn't see the screen) "Well you're not there anymore...how does 312 sound?"

I was off that scale and reading that screen faster than lightning... I'm not even sure how I got there... "No way! Are you serious? How accurate is this thing? Am I really two hard weeks away from the 200's? I mean don't get me wrong, that number sucks, but are you serious?"

So apparently I was 15-25lbs lighter than I ever thought (and Z was a little overwhelmed by my reaction).... huh... work and working out must agree with me right now. But I wouldn't be standing in this room with Z if I didn't know weight loss and overall fitness makes me a better dancer. You may think it's a terrible number, that you can't imagine what weighing this much would be like. You may even look at me next time you see me after reading this and not feel the same way towards me because you know this seemingly private thing about me...

It's a freaking number...get over it. A person weighs what they weigh until they decide to change it or it is changed for them via surgery or illness. That's all it is.

Next up in the Fitness Test was flexibility... no worries there I did the Sit and Reach in Junior High just like every body else... meh. I am good at increasing my flexibility. Then we did the strength test, I literally scored off the charts for my category... apparently I have sound reason for worrying about breaking things because I don't know my own strength. (Not really, the test chart has ridiculously low expectations.)

BMI was a good 20 points higher than I would like it to be at least.... but that part I knew already.

Cardiovascular Fitness... Me, a stationary bike, a heart monitor, and Z doing my BP every 2 minutes. The task was to keep my RPM's within a certain range as the resistance on the bike increased... also to tell Z how difficult I thought it was using some arbitrary scale on the wall. This was the easiest cardio fitness test EVER. Well I never got above a 3 in the scale on the wall (it was EASY). Basically my cardiovascular health is really sound (Z had to do the calculations twice because he didn't really believe it.) My VO2 level or rate is 50 (VO2 is a measurement of how efficient your body is at using the oxygen you breath in) he tells me 52 is considered excellent. Woo hoo!

Bottom line... because I asked him to break it down for me. My knees and whatever other joint issues I might have, are the only things keeping me from doing anything I want. And AND... just what every inherently lazy person like myself loves to hear.... "Wow, yeah Kat if you really want to see changes you're going to have to push yourself hard." Meaning... if I don't push myself in my workouts then I won't see much improvement because I'm already in decent shape.

Guess who hasn't been pushing herself in her workouts, and asked her new dance teacher to take it super easy in their first lesson... yeah... that'd be me.

Oy! This is going to HURT... I'm ready... I think... nervous as hell about sustaining an injury... another injury that is... the last one took almost a full year to really properly heal.

We'll see... while I will not be signing up with Z for training sessions... no room in the budget... he did say he was going to start looking for me more often in the gym...

Great... and that extra 3/4" with the bright red hair... yeah..that'll help me blend in for sure. *eye roll* 

This is when the inner monologue really helps... I don't want to go to the gym, but I do want to be better at ballroom, I want to be better at ballroom a whole lot MORE than I don't want to go to the gym... okay... I'm on my way to the gym.

That inner monologue right there is what got me to negotiate myself down 100lbs a few years ago.

Speaking of which.... time for bed for me...because I have to get to the gym... :-)

Next post up as soon as I can... Holiday Showcase 2013 - My Return to the Spectating Arena.

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