Saturday, May 7, 2011

Validation. Almost.


So, my body issues have been rearing their ugly little heads lately.

I'll be content for awhile, and then for whatever reason I'll feel fat and disgusting and worse than I did when I weighed over 300 pounds.

I decided that I really needed to get back to a gym (which will be a whole other post, but spoiler alert: there are no naked Asian ladies). As much as I enjoy my solitary garage workouts, I knew I wasn't pushing myself as hard as I used to when I practically lived at the Y. I feel like if I can get these 20-ish pounds I gained over the last year off again, maybe I'll hate my body less. Maybe I won't. But it's worth a try.

Anyway, one of the perks of my gym is a session with a personal trainer every four weeks. So, I met with mine and she wanted to get some baseline measurements, including my body fat percentage. As she was pinching away with the calipers, she was shaking her head and looking perplexed.

And she told me what I already knew. "I don't think these are very accurate because I can tell what I'm pinching is loose skin and not fat."

Welcome to my world.

So, she decided I'd get to use their fancy schmancy hydrostatic body fat measurement system that they normally charge $100 for. Basically, it uses the principle that fat floats while lean mass sinks to get a far more accurate measurement. So anyway, I had to strip down and climb into what looked (and felt) an awful lot like a Mormon baptismal font.

The verdict? 17% body fat. Yeah, I nearly fainted from shock. The measurement she got with the taping and pinching method was 23%, which still isn't bad. But 17%? That's kind of crazy. In a good way. Also, she told me I was built like a short Venus Williams. I still haven't decided if that's a compliment or not. And I'm not delusional enough to believe for one second that I'm built like Venus Williams. I'm not built like her at all, except for the fact that neither of us were blessed with hips. Or boobs.

I wish I was built like her.


So anyway, I was starting to feel better, thinking that maybe I'm not a fat cow after all. Just a cow with rolls of excess skin that only look like fat!

But then she burst what small bubble of self esteem I had when she said, "But I can tell that most of that 17% lives right here," as she grabbed the fistful of flabby flesh that resides between my (non-existent) boobs and belly button.

Sigh.

Oooh! And speaking of belly buttons, close your eyes and touch your belly button. Go ahead, I'll wait.

See? You totally know exactly where it is even though you can't see it.

Guess what? I don't. Since the tummy tuck, I don't have a freaking clue where it is unless I feel around for it or look at it.

Just thought you might want to know.

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