SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi Meredith. Hi, Kimberly. How's it going? I'm good. How are you? The last few weeks have been rough, but I feel like yesterday and today have been like top-tier days. Yay. I am I am doing so much better. Uh for some context, Kimberly is still dealing with the effects of the UTI and having back problems. Well, my back seizing up. Um, but how did physical therapy go today? Fine. Okayed me to do Pilates and my Peloton because I've been kind of leery about actually doing the Peloton while like not feeling super great. He was like, Yeah, do all do it as long as it doesn't make you feel worse. And I was like, okay, great. So I think that'll make me feel a lot better doing all of that. I'm glad. Okay. Um, well, I'd like to give an update on my life. Oh, okay. Yes. Please do share. Last time I saw you was Saturday, right? Yeah, what happened since then? Uh so do you remember when we talked about me going to the vet and them saying that like spite is not an emotion that dogs can experience because they don't understand that concept? Um bullshit. I think I think she's wrong for lack of a better term. I was gonna say something meaner, but I'll refrain. You're gonna edit yourself. Yeah. Uh so she told me, and Boat Guy has been telling me, like, hey, get a kennel for him because he he does like walk around. Like, he'll go to the bathroom and then he'll walk around in it and then track it throughout the apartment. But I do feel bad leaving him that long in the kennel. He's old, but I was just like, you know, he sleeps most of the time, anyways. He should. I was worried about him howling, but they gave me anti-anxiety medicine to hopefully help with that. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna give him the tracedone and I'm gonna test it out on something easy. So I went to yoga yesterday morning, which is an hour long. I was gone for two hours max with drive time. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna put him in here. Everything's clean, there's blankets, there's toys. He just had the tracedone. He should just sleep. So I came back to the apartment. I could hear him howling from the hallway and was like, okay, cool, great start. Open the door, smells like shit in here. Get to the kennel, and for the record, I took him out and he pooped and peed right before I left. So I was like, I am golden. I can see something on the front of the kennel, but I can't really tell what it is. It's like, oh, maybe he threw up. No. I take him out. He had shit through the side of the kennel, and this is a metal foldable kennel, so just shit through the bars um onto the carpet and then smeared it about the kennel uh with his nose and pause. So shit, shit, shit, everywhere. And it took me an hour. Like I had to take the kennel apart, take it to the shower, use like a scrub brush, and like douse it with hot water, and then scrub every little metal bar. I had to wash all of the bedding. Uh, I had to wash him because it's like caked in between his toenails. And I'm sorry, but you can't tell me that that's not spiteful behavior. Am I am I insane or is he just having a lot of things? Because it's new and it's different. And if he's never been in a crate before, then No, he's crate trained. I like he was crate trained as a puppy. We just like living in such a small space, I didn't use his crate anymore because I was like, you know, it's fine. I got rid of it a while ago. He'll be fine. He's old. No, he like. Anyways, that was fun. It's all clean now, and I'm gonna try again. But I put down a towel and I'm gonna cover it with a towel and we'll see how it goes. So, anyways. Well, that's shitty. That was ha ha ha. That was my day. That sucks.

unknown 4:24

It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Um, also, today is my topic. Wanna know what our topic is? Uh yeah, what are we talking about today? We're gonna talk about BMI. Oh, okay. Yeah, that fucker. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, that's body mass index. I'm sure everyone's heard it. Maybe their doctor said something about it. Maybe their scale told them they were obese and they had a panic attack about it, or that's just me. It's fine. Uh but that's why I want to talk about it. Um, and how how accurate it is, and other indicators we can use for health. Um full disclosure, I started my period today, which is apparently the worst day to track any of this. Like everything's off. Um, so I'm going off of today's numbers, which are probably the worst, but that's okay. And I'm gonna be fully honest about my numbers because I like I think the word obese just scared me a little bit when looking at this scale, because I was like, I certainly don't feel obese, and I certainly don't think I look obese, but I'm not blind to the fact that I'm not in perfect health. I'm not stupid. Like, I over the last year have been very inconsistent about physical activity at all. And I didn't start getting back into being consistently active until early January. Um, but I have been physically active almost seven days a week for at least the last two months. And so when the number on the scale has not really moved a lot, and then I saw that my BMI was almost in the obese range, I was like, what the fuck? Like, what is I'm trying really hard. Right. And it just, you know, feels like a kick in the dick. Yeah, it's super demotivating to be like, I'm doing all this stuff and nothing is changing. No, and I I know that the number on the scale doesn't always matter, and muscle weighs more than fat, and all of those things that people tell you to think about when you look at that stuff. And I think you and I previously talked about it. Like, doesn't it matter that you just feel better because I do? And it does. And I'm not I'm not that worried about changing my body. I'm not unhappy with my body. I think it was just the word obese that scared me. And I was like, oh, okay. And then I started looking into like what actually are good indicators of health, and I did discover that I'm certainly not in the best shape. So we can I can remember that throughout this, but it's just what it's just what got me thinking about the topic. No, okay, cool. I'm excited about this. I think this could be really interesting, and I'm excited to learn something new. Sweet. But we're not we're also not healthcare professionals, so all of this is from the internet, right? Correct. I will link uh the article that I used. Uh they interviewed a bunch of Stanford researchers in 2024 about because I found like a lot of scholarly articles about it, but they were from like 2010 and then 2014, and this was the most recent one that I found. Nice. It's it's like the overall tone was pretty much the same as like it duh, it is a good predictor of overall mortality in certain areas, but it's not it's not an accurate measure of your overall health. Um, it's mostly a measure of your body fat body fat percentage, but I'll get into it. Okay. So, in case anybody wants to know, mine's 29.4 based on my current body stats. I'm 5'2, 160 as of today. What's the scale for BMI? It is. I'm finding it. I'm finding it. I'm not finding it. I actually have an app that I swear I had it in here. Oh, the categories are underweight, normal, overweight, and obese, but I don't have the numbers. Do you have the numbers? I do. Um, according to this app that I use that's a connected to my uh scale, my the scale that I used to weigh myself, underweight would be anything under 18.5. Normal is between 18.5 and 25, and then anything between 25 and 30 is overweight, and then anything above 30 is obesity. Okay, so I'm like right on the border, like almost at 30. And so it's weight divided by height squared, and it was created 200 years ago by a Belgian scientist, and it was meant to describe the average male body. So, I mean, most research is done based on the male body, not the female body, and females also care, like have a different body fat percentage, but like their normal is higher, and you know, hormones affect our shit. So A for us. But today, BMI is still used for like healthcare screenings, insurance policies. Like the article was saying that some people don't qualify for um gastric bypass surgery if their BMI is too low, or they don't qualify for certain organ transplants if their BMI is too high. Okay, that's interesting. So it's supposed to measure body fat percentage, but it can't distinguish between what is muscle, what is fat, and what is bone density. That like a very rudimentary calculation. Yeah. And it doesn't show where fat is stored in your body. So, like, what it's going off of is that your body fat percentage is too high, which is which higher body fat percentages are linked to um mortality rates, which is true, but the bad fat is visceral fat, and it can't tell you how what percentage is visceral fat, which is the deep abdominal fat. Okay. Um, it also doesn't account for gender differences. So women naturally naturally store more fat in their hips and thighs, and BMI doesn't adjust for that, and it doesn't account for race or ethnicity. So different body populations have different body compositions and risk levels. Okay. So visceral fat is the fat around the organs and is mainly resides in the abdominal cavity. Which I don't know how you would be able to tell that. My well wait. Let me see. I have a scale that measures like different type of body fat percentage. I do too, and mine measures visceral fat.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

But it doesn't really like uh how do they do that? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

So, anyways, those are a lot of the main problems with BMI. It's like it's a starting point and an average, but it doesn't like you said, it's a rudimentary number and it doesn't account for a lot of different factors that also affect your overall health and mortality rate. But I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about how it isn't completely useless. It's super easy to calculate, which like we just figured out it's not easy to calculate a lot of this other stuff. So, like I said, it can be a good starting point for a lot of things. And it does help identify like high-risk populations. So by the standard definition, am I obese? Probably not. But I do have a higher body fat percentage, and so it's a good indicator of hey, you should probably pay attention to this. Maybe not freak out about it like I did. But it I mean, I'm working on it. I am working on working out more, so I do understand that it's not good to have a higher body fat percentage, but the word obese is just alarming for stuff.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Yeah. For anyone, probably.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

For anyone really, yeah, it should be. Um, what the article says is healthcare providers recommend using the BMI number along with other numbers in order to actually identify what's important. So take your blood pressure regularly, check your cholesterol, and your your body fat distribution. I don't know why I can't fucking talk today. How do you check your body fat distribution? There is a body roundness index that uses your waist circumference and is better at estimating abdominal fat percentage. All right, before I get to my like final numbers, do you know your BMI? I do. Um Are you willing to share it? Yeah. The last time I took my BMI or last time I weighed myself, which was the 2nd of March. So this was after I got back from Costa Rica, my BMI was 26.7.

unknown 13:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

So that puts me uh in the overweight category because anything over 25 is overweight. Well, I still think that's bullshit, but it's fine. So do you think that number matches how you feel about your body?

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yeah. Really? To me it does. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

I think it um I think I probably have more fat than I want in compared to muscle.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So if I start lifting weights again and start doing Pilates and stuff and building back that muscle, I think and that no and that BMI doesn't change, but I can see that I'm stronger, then I wouldn't think twice about it. That number doesn't really uh concern me too much. It's more about how I look and feel than just some arbitrary number, I guess. I'm trying to remember that. I do know I have a long way to go as far as as far as building my muscle back up, because yeah, the last couple years were rough, but I am already feeling better and it just feels good to, I don't know, know that I'm headed in a positive direction and try to remind myself that I'm working on it and it's okay. Uh yeah, you've been killing it with the hot yoga. I know. I'm proud of you. Thank you. I think I told you the instructor remembered me the other day, like by name, and was like help like telling me that I'm in pro I've improved on some stuff. And I was like, is this what it feels like to have like a regular gym? I don't know what that's like. No, that's awesome though, that they're remembering you and being and and can see the progress that you've made because you've been working really hard. So that's cool. It did feel good, and it does like it helps motivate me to keep going for sure. Yeah. Um, I guess I don't know, to break it down. I set out because it pain it made me panic so much to prove that BMI sucks and it's not right, and that's not true. It like it it is still a good indicator of certain things, and understand that it's just one part of a multitude of things that show overall health. So it's not it's not perfect, but it's not completely inaccurate, and obese is just a word. Well, and technically you're not there yet. True. Like you're what was your number? 29.4. Yeah, see? Not even there. I'm just a little you're in that overweight category with me. It's fine. I'm the water's great. Stay here. What? Me catastrophizing? No, I've never done that before in my life. Yeah. Alright, I'm gonna be brutally honest about all of my numbers, and trust me, they're not great. Okay. In case anybody wants to feel better. So I'm 36, 5'2, 160, my BMI is 29.4, body pet body fat percentage is 36, muscle is 60.7%, my waist circumference is 34 inches, and my resting heart rate according to the scale, not my watch. So the scale that I don't use every day is 85. Do you know what your watch says your wrist resting heart rate is? I don't know. I put it on do not disturb because somebody keeps yelling at me. You're welcome. 74. So 85's a little high, but so here's my health information. Okay. Um, so we already discussed our BMIs. Okay. Well, body fat percentage. For women, the typical ranges are essential fat is 10 to 13 percent, athletes, 14 to 20 percent. Fitness, 21 to 24 percent. Average is 25 to 31 percent, and higher is 32 to 39 percent. So I'm I'm 36%, so I have a high body fat percentage. My my scale thing says 31.2. Okay, so you're like just on the cusp. According to this, I'm just on the cusp of acceptable, but you said that's high. Uh it says average is 25 to 31, and then 32 to 39 is higher. So it says 36% body fat still falls into the higher but still common range for adult women. Um, it also says that it's important to remember that body composition scales overestimate body fat, and that hormones, hydration, and sodium can affect the number. And it did say that today is the little literal worst day for me to do the measurement. And you took your numbers today. Everything's high, but yeah. Yay. Um, so the muscle percentage was 60.7%, and it says that it's pretty solid. For women, 55 to 65 percent is common depending on your age and fitness level. Do you know what yours is? Well, mine has skeletal muscle and it has muscle mass. What's your muscle mass? 118 pounds. So what percentage would that be? Divide that by your weight. Oh. Hang on. Is it 64.6? Nice. Hell yeah, dude. Is that right? You do the muscle number divided by weight? That's what I would do. Divide the muscle number into the weight number, and then you can check my work with the internet, but I'm pretty sure that's how to calculate percentage. That's fine. I like that number, so I'm just gonna stick with it.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Is that a good number? Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Okay, great. Then I like it. I like that math. Um it says it all it says waist circumference is a better predictor of metabolic health, and under 35 inches is a lower risk for metabolic disease, and I'm at 34, which is below the threshold, still close, but also I did measure at the very widest point, and uh you your girl's real bloated today, but it's fine. I don't know my waist circumference.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Well, that's okay. I thought I had it in my notes, but I didn't find it. And then back to the average heart rate. Uh it said mine was 85. Again, that's based on my scale. My watch says 74. Typical resting heart rate ranges are 60 to 100 beats per minute, and 60 to 80 is common for active adults. It says 85 is normal but slightly elevated, but here are reasons that it could be slightly elevated: stress, caffeine, dehydration, hormones, poor sleep, ADHD medication. Yay! I can see the days that I take medication, my heart rate is much higher, and my aura ring is like, you're really stressed. I'm like, well, it's just tricking my body into thinking that I am. Well, I also think that I it's part of it is because like I definitely make sure that I take medication on days where I know that I am going to really need it and I'm being active and I'm doing things that are stressful. So I think that also kind of can contribute to that a little bit. Like I made sure I took it today. Yeah. But me too. I also I can feel the difference in how I feel if I take it on an empty stomach and when I'm dehydrated, and if I take it after food and if I've had water first, because if I take it without eating and without having water, I will like I will feel the physical effects of like it it's like feeling like you're anxious when you're not. I don't know how to yeah explain that. Um but if I and if I take it after coffee, which I really should not be doing, but I do. Yeah, I try not to drink coffee on days when I take it. Um So yeah. Anyways, lots of indicators as to why mine's higher. Uh but that's me. And I know that I have some work to do, and I'm sorry for talking shit about BMI. It's not the best, but it's not the worst. And um remember that that's just one part of a health indicator, and obese is just a word, and it's okay. Yay, I'm gonna be okay. Well, you're not, let's just remember, you're not even in that category. And you're working your way down because you've been very active. You're eating right, like you're taking good care of yourself. So Yay! Thank you. You're welcome. Um did diving into this topic make you feel better? It actually did. Um, I did, I did really want to like, I went into it as like vindictive and like I'm gonna prove this wrong. And then I was like, you know what? Actually, this has really just given me a better overall picture of the things that I need to work towards. So it was a good thing to think about, even if it was over something silly. I do want to point out, just as my last point about like how hormones and hydration affect the fluctuations. Um, with hormones, estrogen and progesterone shifts can cause two to seven pounds of water weight, and bloating can increase your waist circumference temporarily. Uh, body fat scales are heavily affected by hydration, sodium, hormones, mental cycle, and time of day, meaning your body fat percentage could fluctuate several points during your cycle. And dehydration or excess water can abate, can make body fat appear higher and muscle appear lower. Which I have noticed and also freaked out about because there are it's like one I've been trying to weigh myself every day, and one day my muscle mass will be like three percent higher, and then the next day it's lower, and it's like, oh, that's because I weighed myself at the night time during the night when I had had all of the water I was supposed to have throughout the day, and then the next time it was in the morning, I'm super dehydrated. And I'm like, how does this change so much within a 12-hour period? But well, because you're putting things in your body and you have things going out of your body, and also when you poop, you know, that affects it. Yeah, I always try to weigh myself in the morning on an empty like first thing. Yeah, that's what Boat Guy was telling me to do. I'm just really But I think it doesn't matter if you just if you as long as you just do it at the same time every day. Yeah, you're right. That's it. That's all I had. That's it. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. I think it's interesting to see that BMI is just a part of the picture. It's not the whole picture. But it is a good indicator and like a reminder of like, hey, just doing some quick back of the napkin math, you might want to be nowhere watching. Or like, hey, let's see where you're at. So I think it's still a good thing to use as a tool, but not using it as your end all be all is good. I agree. And I'm still, like I said, proud of myself for being consistent. And I know I need to do more like weightlifting stuff and focus on building more muscle mass because that studies show that that is like the biggest indicator of uh longevity in life. Yeah, it's huge for women. Yeah, because of like once you get past a certain age, it's so much harder to build muscle mass. And when you get into like the 60s and 70s age range and you're not able to physically get around, that's when health rapidly declines. So the reason it's important to build it up before then is so you're still mobile during that time in your life and you can still like do things. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, but I think for now you're still kind of building this routine around your hot yoga and getting really into it. And then once you feel like you have that down, you can start adding in the weights, but you can also just have a set of weights at home. Do you have weights? Yeah. And and I have been using them. It's like at least the hot yoga or yoga in general is a good base because I just think it's so hard to find a workout that is fun. Working out sucks. And I know that's not true for everyone, but it is for me. I think it sucks and I dread it. And so now that I found something that I actually look forward to going to, I'm gonna keep fucking going because it's better than sitting at home and doing nothing no matter what it is. It's huge and it's good for you. Yeah. So that's from me. Thank you. Thanks for letting me take my rage and hormone-fueled topic to the internet. I love it. Well, thanks for sharing. You're welcome. Anything else you want to add? I just want to add that I think that this topic is a good reminder that mildly thriving is thriving enough.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Yeah, that's my girl.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Good job. Good job. Alrighty, I'll talk to you later. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Okay, bye.