A merry heart is good medicine

As an advocate for families, I feel the greatest contribution I can make is to try to curb the rising epidemic of childhood an adult obesity. It is a serious problem, but sometimes we do take ourselves too seriously. The epidemic is not about losing fat…it is about gaining fitness.
One of the best ways to gauge your fitness is to asses your body fat percentage. I realize this may be a repulsive thought. Is it really necessary to have a total stranger measure how fat you are? There is something repugnant about paying a technician $150 to say…yep, you’re fat! Well, the reality is that unless you know this number, you can’t really measure your progress towards fitness. The gold standard for measuring body fat is the water immersion test. This is a sadistic little exercise that is based on the idea that fat floats and muscle sinks. Just toss a stick of butter in your toilet and you will get the picture. The principle is that some evil person weighs you on dry land, then weighs you under water, and then you pay him exorbitantly to subtract the two and confirm that you are kin to the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Honestly, I have a few reservations about this technique. I personally don’t know any doctors that keep a water tank in their office, other than the ones you see on America’s Most Wanted. If you can find one of these things, the next step is to build up the courage to actually have the test. Picture this. You stand by the side of a pool where a crane with a little swing seat weighs you on dry land. Then it slowly picks you up and swings you over the pool of water. Remember this is the same kind of device used to weigh carp after they are pulled from the lake. Not only are you humiliated by sitting in this sling almost naked, but you feel like any moment some fisherman is going to yell out, “Holy cow I caught a whopper!” As the crane approaches the water, all you can think of is that Houdini movie where Harry is trapped in this water chamber and the only way they got him out was to bust the glass with an ax. You should have remembered that this thing was called the Chinese Water Torture…maybe a clue that this was not something you wanted to do. I don’t know about you, but if Houdini couldn’t get out of this thing without an ax, I’m not sure I ever want to get into it to start with. So these thoughts are running through my anxious little brain and right before they dunk me in the water, the evil technician snickers and says, “Now breathe out all the air in your lungs.” I understand why, air floats and the more air in your lungs the more it just looks like fat in this test; however, even babies instinctively know that if you are about to go underwater you breathe in air…because you want to live. So this is not a natural thing, especially now that I am already wet from having an accident by being so nervous. After second guessing myself for the tenth time, I blow out as much as I can, and evil man lowers me into the drink. He forgot to mention that the scale will not weigh correctly until you stop moving. This is not a good piece of information to leave out. I’m under water, half naked in a sling, waving my arms like a hummingbird trying to survive and this idiot is yelling, “Try to stay still.” Underwater that sounds like, “toooohoo straaaaah illlll.” Very helpful indeed! After what I think is about ten minutes- he swears it was ten seconds- he lifts me out and I gasp for breath. He looks at me and then looks at his paper, jots a quick calculation, and says smugly, “Yep…your fat. We take MasterCard.”
Actually I have discovered a much simpler, cheaper way of determining your percent body fat. Take a shower and then before you get dressed, stand naked in front of a full length mirror. Stop crying, and get a stopwatch in one hand. Jump up as high as you can and start the stopwatch. Hit the ground, and keep the watch running as long as there is stuff jiggling. If you go past 30 minutes…yep, you are fat!