Thoughtful Thursday…my metabolic rate and body composition results...

Welcome to Thoughtful Thursday. This GreenNote Fitness newsletter mindfully gathers and distills useful information that is supportive to our journey. It is my mission to educate, inspire, and propel you into action that moves you towards your goals and life of purpose. Take control of your journey today.

Happy 2018! Did you have nice holiday celebrations? Revved and ready to go? I am hopeful that you can feel the enthusiasm and positive vibrations coming through this newsletter. I am revved, ready to go, and ready to share with you some fascinating results from my body composition and metabolic rate testing. One of the things I love about working with clients is learning from them. So often I hear about something new, a place to travel, a food or herb to try, and most recently, body composition and metabolic rate testing in my area! Sign me up! It was easy and affordable which I will get into more detail later. For now, let’s break down the two tests and the results. Metabolic Rate - ReeVue Indirect Calorimeter Definition: This test directly measures the concentration of oxygen you breathe, which correlates to calories burned.

My experience: You breathe into a plastic tube that is connected to a machine which collects your exhaled air and analyzes it. The significance is that there is a direct correlation between oxygen consumed and calories burned. You do this seated and with a clamp over you nostrils. This could take anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on each individual and the machine's ability to measure. I had to go a full twenty minutes! Results: The data is printed out for you to keep and a nurse will review it with you. The number of calories I burn while resting, so not exerting energy, is 1,771. Compared to others of same sex, age, height and weight, that’s considered “fast”. It further breaks the data into what I would burn if I were performing daily activities around the house, for example, and additional calories burned if I exercised for 30 minutes. It also gives you suggested intake calories for loosing weight or maintaining your current weight. Body Composition - InBody Definition: The InBody machine examines the composition of your body, revealing percentage of body fat, muscle distribution, and body water balance. These are all key components to understanding more about your body. My experience: This was very easy and fast, less than 60 seconds. You remove socks and shoes, stand on the InBody machine that first calculates your weight, then you grab the arms of the machine and hold it while it examines your body composition. Results: The results are printed out for you to keep but first is reviewed with you by a nurse. There is more data and breakdown for this type of test. Basically it looks at the water in your cells and shows you if you are dehydrated, normal, or have excess water. It measures your lean body mass, or the amount of muscle you have and the amount of fat you have. The cool thing about this is that it breaks it down by each arm, each leg, and your trunk. One thing that stood out in my results was the discrepancy between the amount of fat distributed in my right arm (less fat) compared to my left arm (more fat). Which of course means (and the data shows), I have more lean muscle in my right arm compared to my left. Fascinating! You can see a snap shot of my results at right.

What’s next? As I mentioned, there is a discrepancy between my right arm having more muscle than my left arm. The interesting thing there is that I’ve previously noticed that my right tricep is larger than my left. Not a big deal by any stretch of the imagination and quite common to have more muscle on our dominate side. However, it gives me a challenge to see if I can lessen that gap. This will be done through nutrition and unilateral exercises. Where I did my testing My testing was performed at the Nebraska Medicine Bariatrics Center. It was very reasonable with a 30% discount they offer if you pay in cash. For both the metabolic test and the body composition test was $52.50. Return visits are less expensive. It’s nice having a baseline measure to compare to in the future. Often it is "what gets measured gets improved". To your journey, Lisa Schaffer GreenNote Fitness You wouldn’t happen to know just one person that would benefit from this information? Please forward it to them! Did you miss last week’s newsletter on 3 things to renew this season ...? P.S. Check out my Facebook page for inspiration. P.P.S. Discover GreenNote Fitness recommendations for books, podcasts, and more on body, mind, and spirit.