The Bod Pod

Several women that serve on the board of directors for Girls on the Run with me were talking about the "bod pod" during a meeting we had the other week.  Color me intrigued.  Since losing 150+ pounds, I really had no idea what the make-up of my body was.  I had no idea what was fat, what was muscle, what was skin, etc., so when I heard about the bod pod, I definitely wanted to check it out.

The Bod Pod

This particular Bod Pod was at Eddie's Health Shoppe and at first I was a little sketched out, but when more than one woman told me that they had really benefitted from the experience, I figured it couldn't hurt to go through with the test.  As women, we focus so much on the number that shows up on the scale, or what size clothes we wear, and it can get really frustrating to feel like you're working so hard and nothing is changing.  What the Bod Pod does is measure the actual makeup of your body, so it goes beyond just your weight number and tells you what that number is made up of.  When I first walked in, I was a little intimidated.  I felt like I was getting ready to go off in a space ship or something.  But the tests were fairly simple and the whole thing lasted less than 3 minutes.  They ran a series of 3 tests, each one lasting around 40 seconds and I didn't really feel anything while sitting in the Bod Pod.  The technician described it to me as like being on an airplane with the air compression, but I think that airplanes are actually worse than this.  But of course, the test means nothing without understanding the numbers that come from the results, and that was the best part of this whole experience.  Eddie schedules around an hour to sit and talk through the numbers with you and make suggestions for nutrition and exercise, but he actually sat there and talked with me for almost an hour and half.  So here's what my numbers looked like -

When I first saw the weight number, I immediately did what all women do and was ashamed because I thought it was so high.  Society tells us that as women, what's acceptable is between 120-150 pounds, so of course 198 was way too high, never mind the fact that I've lost 150+ pounds (and yes, I've never actually admitted my starting weight to anyone publicly, but if you're smart enough and can do that math, I topped out at 350+ pounds). When the technician handed me the results, I was fully prepared for her to shame me with that high number, but was totally taken aback when she told me that my results were very good.  I'll explain.  If you look at the left hand column, you'll see that 26.6% of that 198 pounds is fat, while 73.4% is lean mass (which you can read is everything except the fat like muscle, bone, organs, etc.).  When Eddie came in and walked through the numbers with me, he says for my age and my height, I currently am in the top 12% of women for my lean mass percentage.  WHAT?!?!?!  I could barely wrap my head around it.  I kept going back to "but my weight is still so high" and he kept having to tell me that didn't matter, my weight was perfectly fine and that some of that weight is most likely the skin that is left over from my weight loss.

Then we took at look at my resting heart rate, which you can see circled in the bottom left hand corner.  I burn 1,802 calories just by sleeping and that doesn't take into account any exercise that I do.  Eddie explained that if I haven't been losing any additional weight (which I haven't for over the past year), that it's most likely because I'm not eating enough calories to counter the amount of calories that I'm burning, so my body is constantly holding on to whatever calories I have so that it doesn't go into starvation mode, especially now that I'm in training for the half marathon and am running longer and longer distances.

Who would have thought that I would be told that I'm not eating enough?  Of course, here's the thing.  That doesn't mean that I get to go back to eating double cheeseburgers and fries (damnit) and Eddie spent the rest of the session walking through exactly what my food intake should look like in order to reach a 16 week goal, which you can see in the top right hand corner of the second picture.  My goal is to lose an additional 14 pounds of fat and potentially 2 pounds of lean mass (which could just be skin or additional water) within 16 weeks.  If I'm able to achieve that goal, that will take me down to around 22% fat mass, which puts me in the "lean" category.  Again, WHAT?!?!  Never, ever, ever in my entire lifetime did I ever think that someone would describe me as lean.  Maybe not obese, but never lean.

Now the hard part begins.  Eddie spelled out a pretty specific diet for me, and I'm very slightly nervous in my ability to maintain it.  While obviously my eating hasn't been horrible as I have been able to lose weight, I've never really restricted myself or been super specific in what I was eating, I've just tried to be careful.  And the thing that scares me the most is that I'm starting this during my four busiest months, when I'm traveling a lot and am going to be in places and situations where I can't necessarily control what I'm eating.  And I actually have to learn how to meal prep.  I've always admired those people that do that, but now I actually have to figure out how to do it for myself.  And forget the random lunches out or the drinks after work.  But how awesome will it be if I can do this?  And especially because I would be ending the 16 weeks right around the time of the half marathon.  Just imagine what this could do for accomplishing that goal.

So I've planned out the next several days of meals, and after I publish this blog post I'm off to the grocery store to get started.  Wish me luck!