Another week and body fat testing!

Last Tuesday I decided to head down to Los Angeles for some advanced body fat testing. Unfortunately mother nature decided to intervene and bless us with the worst rains in years. Luckily I survived and after spending a total of six hours in traffic (I was only heading down to irvine!) I made it home mostly intact.

But let me go into my visit to the body fat test center some more. I had made reservations for three different type of tests. The first one was to test my resting metabolic rate. During this test they sit you in a comfortable massage chair and then stick a tube in your mouth that can only be described as a cross between scuba gear equipment and the gear used in the Rocky 4 Russian training montage! After fifteen minutes of ackward breathing I was done with the "easy" test.

The second test is best described as chinese water torture! It is a method of weighing someone while completely submerged in water, or more commonly known as the "water dunk test". This test is a lot harder then it sounds, you literally have to go under water and expell ALL of your air. Then you have to hold it for a few seconds, its a feeling of near drowning that took me a few attempts to get right. Then again how do you get "nearly drowning" right? Luckily after a few minutes it was all over. The good news is this test is the most accurate way of body fat testing. With margin of error being +/- 1 percent. Most other methods including caliber can be off by between 3 to 6 percent, which as you can guess is grossly inaccurate. So if you want accurate body fat testing, all you have to do is nearly drown! What a deal.

Finally came what I like to call the "iron man" test. This is where they put a mask gizmo around your head so that you can keep a breathing tube in your mouth. It makes you look really cool and sound like Darth Vader. Other then that it allows the computer to monitor your oxygen consumption as you traverse the treadmill. They also give you a heart rate monitor to check your heart rate during the test. The test consisted of increasing treadmill speed and incline as they pushed my heart to its limited. By the end of the test we peaked at around 191 beats per minute, or as I like to call it the, "gee I think im going to puke" zone.

Now that all the testing was done, I had the to sit down and look at the printouts of my performances. As predicted they were pretty scary. Before my downhill slide I was in excellent health when it came to body fat as well as my cardiac endurance. I was really shocked at the degree i had degenerated to in a mere two years! As promised I am 100 percent candid about my experience and below I will list all my results as they were given to me by the testing center. As a side note I need to note that the test center scale had me weigh in at 329 while my local gym had been reading 326. For the testing purposes every statistic is based on 329, further updates to my blog will be based on my local gym's scale so results may be slightly scewed by +/- 2 lbs.

Test Date: January 22, 2008 12:42 PM

Sex: Male Age: 25 Height: 75.25 inches Weight: 329.5 lbs
Ankle Circumference: 11 inches
Resting Pulse: 70 BPM
Water temp: 33 C
Water WEight: 6100 grams

Hydrostatic Evaluation:

Body Fat %: 32.1
Fat Body Mass: 105.8 lbs
Lean Body Mass%: 67.9
Lean Body Mass: 223.7 lbs

NOTE: The system recommended an ideal body fat percentage of 15%. If lean body mass is maintained during dieting, this would entail losing 66.3 lbs to settle at a weight of 263.2 lbs. Currently I am what I would consider "really REALLY fat" so there is a lot of room for improvement. Always look at the bright side of a situation!

VO2 Testing Results

Cardio strength:
start AeT AT Peak
VO2 (ml O2 / kg/m) 8.9 13.9 15.0 25.2
Heart Rate (BPM) 105 124 128 191
Calories Per Hour 384 601 647 1090
Fitness Level Very Low

AeT = Aerobic Threshold AT = Anaerobic Threshold

NOTE: For all those who prefer the easy explanation over the numbers above, the analysis basically says im in horrible shape. I am currently the polar opposite of Lance Armstrong. While i have never been a runner, in the past my cardio was in great shape and I am set on reaching my goal!

Fitness Level Scale for Age 20-29

Very Low Low Fair Good Excellent Superior
<33.0 (thats me!) 33.0 - 35.6 36.5 - 42.4 42.5 - 46.4 46.5 - 52.4 52.4

Target Workout Zones:

Moderate Zone (optimal for fat loss): HR 124-128
HIgh Zone (optimal for cardiac training, not optimal for fat loss) HR 128 - 175

NOTE: From analyzing the above data you can deduct that the optimal cardio for body fat loss is a slow cardio. When I started doing cardio sessions recently it was easy for my heart rate to settle into the 140 to 150 BPM range. keeping my heart rate at around 128 was a great challange because for me it was a walking pace. And "walking" never felt like much of a workout. To assist me I bought a Polar Heart Rate Monitor which has helped me greatly in the last week. The only downside to this method is that you have to do cardio for longer periods to burn more calories then before. The reality is that running or going faster may be good for your heart but you will burn more muscle and less fat during the activity. So slow and steady wins the body fat race!

Target Caloric Zones

Recommended Daily Caloric intake for Weight Loss Zone: 2731 - 3413 calories
Maintenance Zone: 3413 to 4436 calories

NOTE: Please note that my caloric intake requirements are much higher then the average person. Even though I am over weight I still have almost 225 lbs of lean body mass which is more then most peoples complete mass. This is an important fact to realize for anyone who starts out "larger". Most diet fads out there have you go down to 1500 or even 1000 calories per day. For anyone that is above average in natural size this could be a medical disaster. Starvation is not the key to diet. In fact, it will bring your metabolic rate to a halt and hamper your fat loss instead of assisting it.

Resting Metabolic Rate: 3413 calories
Lifestyle & Activities: 1023 calories
Excercise: 426 calories

Total = RMR + Lifestyle + Exercise
My Total = 4862

NOTE: THe lifestyle & Activities as well as Excercise numbers were calculated by questions I had answered before my test. the 426 calories burned would be the equivolant of my body performing 30 to 45 minutes of cardiovascular activity at 128 BPM.

Calories IN vs Calories Out Comparison:

Calories IN 2732 VS Calories OUT 4862
Caloric Deficit: 2130
Calories in 1 lb: 3600

NOTE: From the previous calculation you can see that simply by keeping my diet to roughly 2732 calories and doing moderate cardio each day I can lose upwards of 2/3 of a lb of weight a day. An important thing to notice here is that there are a lot of hidden variables to this sytem. If my caloric intake drops below recommended levels it can slow my resting metabolic rate. Additional cardio can increase my daily excercise caloric output as well as weight training.

During the remaining weeks of my Getting Back To Awesome Project I will keep all these numbers in mind as I continue to battle toward my end goal. This trip was like a rude awakening that forced me to look at myself and evaluate my health. The journey will only get tougher from here but I confident that in the end i will be victorious. I hope you will follow me on my journey and as always I greatly appreciate the feedback and support.