Cosmo hooked me on self quizzes at a young age. (Never mind the fact I was reading Cosmo long before I even knew what an “o face” was, much less that I ought to be concerned about it.) Not only did they help me with my math skills – can I subtotal all my “c” scores in my head while deducting points for “a”s? – but I learned valuable things about myself. Things like which character from Friends do I most resemble (I’m a tie between Monica and Chandler, the two most neurotic characters on the show, natch), what my IQ is (thankfully they don’t score for common sense!), my risk for an eating disorder (off the charts but much lower than it used to be), what my Dr. Phil personality is (as opposed to my other personalities Cher and Elmo) and if I have good personal hygiene (Um no I don’t pee in the shower!).
My favorite of all the quizzes are, naturally, the health and fitness assessments. If there is a number out there that could possibly be attached to me in some way, I have found it. I have tested my BMR, RMR, AT, VO2 max, BRCA (gene), BMI, BAI and done the Cooper Test, Army Ranger Test, Presidential Fitness test, Jillian Michael’s test, the P90X benchmark test and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I’ve got more acronyms than a can of alphabet soup. I’ve never met a test I didn’t want to take immediately. Remember the “Find your happy weight calculator” debate we had on here a couple of years ago? Yeah. Mine was… not so happy.
But is this preoccupation with personal assessments helpful to my mental and physical well-being?
My friend Erika was asking me the other day what I thought about her results from her metabolic testing (i.e. the death by suffocation while running on a treadmill test). She was confused as to how she should change her workouts in regards to her results. I surprised myself by telling her that I didn’t think it mattered. While I have done these (very expensive) tests, I realized as I was talking to her that they changed nothing for me in the long run. Perhaps if I were an elite athlete, or at least vying for a spot in my age group in my next race, then these numbers would be meaningful for my training but honestly the only thing I remember about my test was the abysmally low calorie count it gave me for my resting metabolic rate. The bad news: one Dairy Queen blizzard is double the amount of calories I need for an entire day. The good news: when the apocalypse comes me and my super-efficient metabolism are going to be living large with the roaches.
Metabolic tests are only one of a panoply of assessments out there, however. I was reminded of this when my sister – the beautiful Laura who threw me the world’s best birthday party ever, in case you forgot – sent me a link to the state of Colorado’s “livewell” site. According to a commercial she’d seen on TV, over 50% of Coloradoans are overweight or obese and (cue scary music) most of them didn’t even know it.
When I first looked at the site I couldn’t decide if it was fear-mongering (Imagine all those people walking around doing their thing and being happy and not even knowing they’re one hamburger shy of being a headless fatty in a CNN picture!) or well-intended (Know your health risks? Take our quiz!) The truly scary part is that Colorado is consistently the #1 leanest state in the Union by a long shot. (Tangent: Minneapolis/St. Paul where I live is the #1 fittest state meaning we get the most exercise and yet Colorado is the #1 leanest – more evidence that exercise isn’t as correlated to weight loss as we’ve been told?)
The LiveWell Colorado site, in addition to “obesity in the news” and “obesity blog” sections, has a self-test section named the 360 Gut Check. You can check your BMI (weight to height ratio, widely panned as innacurate), BAI (waist to height ratio, generally considered a good rough estimate) and a behaviors quiz that while insanely obvious (What are these things called veg-e-tables? Can I buy them at IKEA?) gets kudos for even being there and recognizing good health is more about what you do and eat than a certain number.
Then there’s issue of accuracy. My friend Shellie recently wrote me to tell me about her success* with Rachel Cosgrove’s The Female Body Breakthrough and added on this entertaining anecdote:
“www.hallsmd.com says my BMI is XX.X** after their catchy title “A BMI calculator you will like” which doesn’t instill a lot of confidence for accuracy. Nor does the talking moose head on the home page. www.bmicalculatorforfemales.com
also advertises bmi, but calculates body fat instead and came up with XX.XX%, which is pretty darn close to what the personal trainer’s calipers said. But here’s the kicker. According to www.healthstatus.com , my body fat is “XX.XX % (a high number) using the U.S. Navy body fat formula, or XX.XX % (a VERY high number) using the formula developed by the YMCA.” ????? I played around with the calculator to see how much I would have to weigh to be healthy according to their calculator. According to the YMCA, 75 lbs and a waist size of 17 (that’s my 4-year-old’s waist size) would get me a body fat percentage of 22.25%. I have actually seen an adult my height weigh 75 lbs. It was my grandmother, just before she died of stomach cancer. She looked like a concentration camp victim. She was buried in her wedding dress which had to be stuffed with a pillow because she was so much smaller at age 68 than she was at 20. Not only should the YMCA leave you alone to do your experiments (and be grateful for the free advertising.) They should really get out of the body fat calculation business.”
I went to all the sites Shellie linked (of course I did!) and got hugely varying numbers as well. It was bizarre and a little depressing.
For myself, when it comes to tests of physical feats – like the New President’s Challenge Fitness Test or the Fit Blogger Challenge I did in January (We swept it! Yay team GFE!) – I find them encouraging and entertaining but when the tests measure weight, body fat or other measures of being rather than doing, I don’t find them as useful.
What do you think about the Colorado LiveWell initiative – is there really an epidemic of people “who are overweight/obese and don’t know it”? Is it more helpful or hurtful? What about health and fitness tests in general? Out of curiosity, did you take any of the tests I linked to?? (You took the Friends one, I know it!)
*Shellie lost 18 pounds and 12% body fat!!! I can attest to how good she’s looking as I got to go shopping with her the other day to pick out a new wardrobe!
** I don’t use actual numbers on this site for BMI, weight or body fat % (just the change) as many people find these triggering.
I would be extremely wary of anything that claims to calculate your body fat percent. You can’t really calculate that, so much as measure it. I don’t think there’s any way that I could put a bunch of numbers in a computer and find out what my body fat percent is. Of course, I didn’t click on any of the links to find out … that’s just my two cents on it.
Yeah, and because I haven’t measured my BF since the great bod pod debacle in March, I wasn’t sure how accurate the estimates were either. Although to be fair, calipers aren’t known to be super accurate either!
I think the criteria for what determines being overweight (for the purposes of most everyone it’s BMI) leaves it quite likely for a lot of people to not know they are overweight.
I had a body builder friend who was deemed obese… Before he looked at his BMI, he had NO idea…
There’s a lot of things that numbers do not tell… and overall health is not one. Do they give insight into possible problems en masse? Yes… but individually? No.
also, regarding % body fat (which I fully believe is more indicative of good health than BMI – not perfect, but a lot better) I fully agree that it cannot be determined online. You’re not a professional, so even if they have you measure using calipers, you may not be measuring properly… and even calipers aren’t even as accurate as the egg or the water test… and anyways?? Who really needs to know that if your body is functioning well, and if you listen to it… you know it is.
Sometimes (oftentimes if we truly listen to our bodies… truly) we can be our own best self test.
I love this: “Sometimes (oftentimes if we truly listen to our bodies… truly) we can be our own best self test.” I used to know my body fat % like the back of my hand and you know what has changed since I stopped measuring it? Nothing. 🙂
http://www.bmicalculatorforfemales.com calculated my body fat % to be at *least* 10% higher than it is – that is, it was 10% higher than what I was measured at when I joined a gym 4.5 years ago. My weight has been up and down a bit since then, but having reintroduced weight-lifting in the past nine months, I imagine my body fat is lower than it was 4.5 years ago, and much MUCH lower than that estimate.
As for the “Happy weight” calculator… it recommended a weight 5lbs lighter than my lightest adult weight, at which point I was being told by friends I looked gaunt.
Clearly my policy of completely ignoring such tests and estimates and getting on with eating and exercising intuitively has stood me in good stead for keeping myself sane.
Yes, that calculator put me at at least 10% higher than I likely am as well. I think part of the problem was not knowing where on my neck and arm to measure. Yet another issue with online tests – user error!
Perhaps because I have some pounds to lose around my middle, I really don’t like doing all of these analyses. The people who are ultra slim feel overly confident about their health, when the truth is that something else besides excess weight can happen to cause cancer, etc…. Us lunkier people feel inadequate for all the super progress we made because the damn calculations say we are somehow bad, even though we have probably greatly reduced our risk to heart disease, cancer, etc…
I have a firm belief that positive messages and undertones about fitness are the only ones that work for people who are not in the middle of a health scare (that works too!). We need to encourage our gym buddies and internet buddies and REALLY believe in them. We need to have faith in ourselves. Because people usually only maintain better fitness levels if they have the support and have made a meaningful positive lifestyle change.
🙂 Marion
This: “The people who are ultra slim feel overly confident about their health, when the truth is that something else besides excess weight can happen to cause cancer, etc…. Us lunkier people feel inadequate for all the super progress we made because the damn calculations say we are somehow bad, even though we have probably greatly reduced our risk to heart disease, cancer, etc…” is SO true. Good for you for recognizing the power of your positive lifestyle changes.
I’ve known too many people who got ridiculous results with all sorts of body fat % tests (including calipers) to believe any of them. If it’s not a performance test, I’m not interested. (And I’ve never watched Friends.)
Yeah, the performance tests are more fun anyhow! Not watching TV these days I can understand how you’ve never seen Friends but seriously, it kinda defined the 90’s for me, lol!
I don’t worry about too many numbers, but then I do most everything I can to have good numbers 🙂
I still remember the last test I had to take in school! I don’t like tests!
The YMCA says I’m 61% fat and the Marines say I’m -4.3% (yes, that’s a negative!). Just had to share.
Buwhahahah! Best results evah!
I just read a book I think you’d love and reviewed it on my site. The author does a pretty good job of debunking the calories in vs. calories out myth in one of the chapters. I agree that the doing rather than being tests are my preferred tests, but let’s be real. I like numbers. And I like tests. Did I say that?
According to the toothpaste test I’m the life of the party. Yeah, that one is just as flawed as the rest of them. 😉
Just an FYI, I pee in the shower and I am not ashamed. Not in public showers though. That’s gross.
I’ll have to go check out your review stat! As for peeing in the shower, I’m glad you are socially discriminating;)
omg! I just tried the “find your happy weight” calculator and it told me 158 lbs! I’m 7 months pregnant and I don’t weigh that much!! What ridiculousness…
I’ve given up on these tests. I know I’m overweight. I see myself in a bathing suit every other day, fer cryin’ out loud! I know my clothes are tight, that my stomach rolls up when I sit down, and that I am experiencing, as Stephanie Dolgoff puts it, “The Great Metabolic F.U,” in which ones metabolism “switches into ‘save’ mode.” Basically, I’m gonna have to dig deeper in order to get the weight off. And deal with all my emotional crap so I stop overeating.
*Sigh.*
I personally can’t take any of those health and fitness assessment tests because I don’t think they are healthy in regards to my recovery…and since I’m not an elite athlete anymore and don’t NEED to take those tests, I think it’s best I steer clear! However, I DO love me some good ol’ fashioned personality tests! I’ll admit, I did a blog post a while back on the Friends one..I’m mostly Rachel, with a bit of Phoebe thrown in…:)
Ah see, we’re like yin and yang then! No wonder I like you so much;)
haha ditto! you keep me grounded 🙂
This: “the analysis paralysis vortex” pretty much describes me yesterday. And “instant quantification” is my new fave catchphrase! I love you!!
Fortunately, this is one area where being naturally lazy works out well for self esteem. I can’t be bothered to test myself and thus have no access to concrete numbers saying I’m anything but perfectly fine!
And I think Monica/Chandler is the perfect personality combination. Much rather hang out with either of them than say, Joey. Just don’t go buying a monkey, ok?
I just used the body fat calculator at healthstatus.com. The Navy thinks I have 36.13% body fat, while the Y puts me at 19.68%. However, the Army thinks I’m a big pile of lard at 85.37%, but the Marines have dubbed me superfit at NEGATIVE 1.82%.
What the…?
I’m totally Chandler, despite my love of cooking. I’m just not clean enough for Monica. And I like ducks.
I used to be obsessed with BMI, and looking back I realize it was so inaccurate for me. When I was at the peak of my eating disorder, I was a healthy bmi. I flaunted this fact around so people would think I was healthy.
It makes me sad not only the inaccuracy and inconsistency of these tests, but the prevalancy and accessibility to them. I think of the young teenage girls (or us adults!) who get so sucked in and obsess over them. It is so easy, and without critical thinking it can be devastating.
I have a question about a number, the max heart rate. I do not really know what mine is but is a higher max heart rate considered better than a lower one. I am confused on this point.
I honestly believe that many people have no clue that they are overweight or even how much they are eating each day. You watch Jamie Oliver & parent & kids don’t even know certain veggies. Hard to say if some know & just want to be clueless but all studies point to that many people don’t even realize all the calories they eat each day…
Tests & all that – so often they don’t all mesh as you wrote about in your post…
I have a scale that tell me body fat & BMI but I take it all just a a way to keep track if I am going up & keep going or if it is just a “blip” in the scheme of things. I don’t necessarily think the number is the exact but I don think it is close based on the way I look. I more just don’t want it to keep going up whatever the number is…
I guess it is no wonder why people are confused about the obesity epidemic. But really just go out in a public place and look around. I’ll bet you’ll see 30% of the people who could afford to lose 10lbs. or more.
I too love quizzes, and I DID immediately take the Friends one. I got the tiebreaker question of “which is your fav color, blue or black,” and picked blue – giving me Chandler. So then of course I went back and picked black, to see who’d I’d get then – Monica. Are we twins?