In my posts about weight loss, and a future one about non-scale indicators, I came across a really interesting Personal Wellbeing Index for adults. It has academic rigour, solid citations, decent logic, and relatively discrete categories for themes/areas. I don’t know whether or not it holds water for my weightloss journey, that is a totally-separate question, but I wanted to try it out, so let’s see how it goes.
1. How satisfied am I with my standard of living?
On the test’s ten-point scale, I’d say probably an 8 or 9. I’ll go with 8 for now.
But, of course, as an introverted analyst who normally hates subjective questions, I want to quibble with the question. What does “satisfied” mean? What is included in a SoL? What does it mean to evaluate that when I’m married with someone with a strong second income? Is “satisfied” the right term to measure “quality” or am I just going to see how “satisfied” I am with my life? Is it “singularly happy” or “comparatively happy”?
None of that really matters, as I’m only comparing it to myself. As long as I’m consistent with how I interpret it *for me*, the rest falls away. Yet, for me, a strong element is comparative to that of my parents or between Jacob and myself at the same age. Would I like to be more financially secure (other questions later) or have a slightly more viable opportunity to give Jacob more vacations and travel? Sure. But those are more luxuries to get me to 10, or more accurately, probably into a whole other scale past “10”.
2. How satisfied am I with my health?
On a ten-point scale, I’m going to go with a 6.
I could go lower with a weight-biased view of my health that might make me rate it as a 0 right now. Except I also know that things could be a whole lot worse. The problems I have are relatively fixable, and so for the test, I would say “satisfied with my actual health” might be less accurate than “satisfied with my current options and approach”.
3. How satisfied am I with what I am currently achieving in life?
On a ten-point scale, I’m going to go with a 7.
This one was hard. As an analytical introvert, I am big on goals, goal-setting, goal-tracking, and generally leading a well-examined life. It also means that I am regularly focused on the “next big thing” on my list. But I’m doing pretty well overall within the parameters I have. I’m not KILLING IT at work, as a father, as a husband, as a community member, as a person. But I`ve got one big goal to focus on at the exclusion of almost everything else in my to do list, and I’m doing it. That’s pretty significant. I could do it a lot better, sure, I could be doing more in more areas, but I’m making progress, and that’s good enough for now.
4. How satisfied am I with my personal relationships?
On a ten-point scale, I’ll go with a 6.
I’d say most of the time it’s a 7, but I’m a bit more isolated right now. Some of that is winter, some of that is focusing on my weight, some of that is being a hermit. I’d like to feel closer to my wife, have more quality conversations and activities with my son, do more with a few close friends. But I`m certainly doing better than okay (5), and as I said, it’s normally higher.
5. How satisfied am I with how safe I feel?
If I interpret this as physical safety and/or economic safety, I’m going to rank it pretty high. Probably a 9 or 10 most of the time. Some trips might compromise the physical safety, and there are always unforeseen economic pitfalls that can hit at any time. A bigger challenge would be health safety, and while I would say it would have pulled me down to a 7 or 8 a few months ago, I feel like most things are under control. So I`ll go with 9.
6. How satisfied am I with feeling part of my community?
As I said under #4, I’ve made some choices in the last three years that have led to a bit more isolation in some areas (friends, outings with guys) and more interaction in others (astronomy). It makes me feel untethered at times. So while I’m not sure a good way to score this element, I’m going to go simply, trust my gut, and say I’m at 3.
7. How satisfied am I with my future security?
I don’t feel there is a lot of difference right now between this question and #5 for me, but as there are a few unknowns about retirement, I’ll downgrade it to an 8.
There are TWO OPTIONAL QUESTIONS in the test, and the first is quite challenging.
8. How satisfied are you with your spirituality or religion?
Ignoring the religion side for me as it is not particularly relevant (and the test recommends removing it), I am however interested in questions of gratitude, mindfulness, meditation, etc. All three are lacking in me, and I want to expand them, so I’m going to give it a 2. But I’m going to keep it in my list, with the redirected focus.
9. How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?
This one is not really part of the formal test, more of a relative observation question. After all, the previous 8 assessed different aspects, and if you treated them as equal, you could simply average them (as your brain often does when asked a question like this).
My individual scores/ratings were 8, 6, 7, 6, 9, 3, 8, and 2. The average of those would be 6.1 or so. But if I answer the overall question, I have to say I would put myself closer to 7 or an 8. Sure, some parts could be better, but in general, I have a pretty good life.
So my overall assessment is greater than the sum of its parts, or put perhaps more mathematically, my strong ratings for standard of living, safety and security tend to raise my numbers; by contrast, my community and spirituality lower me quite a bit.
On a formal assessment, the numbers go up by average; on an informal assessment, particularly if I was just gauging mood, those feelings of isolation or disconnectedness factor in much more strongly.
Interestingly, a normative number for Australia is 7.5 with a self-assessed number overall of 7.7. I’m a bit off their norm but only by one standard deviation or so. And I’m more curious if my number changes over time than the norms.
Although honestly, I just thought they were cool questions for a reflection post.
I mentioned last week that I had some ideas for some posts, and was wondering when I would write about them, which week I would handle this or that idea. But I’ve been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster in the last week, and there’s no real cause, so I thought I would talk about that instead.
Since I started doing my blogging and telling my story, I have felt all my nerve endings range from totally dead to constant sparking, at least emotionally. Last week, I was dealing with a bit of disappointment (as I went back to work) about the fact that I hadn’t accomplished more logistically in my six weeks off, or hadn’t had greater results for my health situation. Going back to work itself is also a potential source of stress as I return to a new job, new environment, and a lot of uncertainty. Even with the great news about my A1C numbers, it was an up and down week.
Then the bus crash happened in Ottawa on Friday. And everytime something like that happens, it affects me A LOT. I picture the aftermath for the families, the fickle hand of fate knocking your men over on the chessboard that is your life. Man plans and God laughs, as the saying goes. But trying to explain some of it to Jacob was VERY emotional for me. Hell, I can get emotional at a Bell commercial, so that’s nothing new, I suppose.
Yet later, on an unrelated activity, I was doing some story imagining techniques to kickstart my creativity and I suddenly found myself following my brain into stories and ideas with high emotional content. Eulogies and traumatic events, how to handle them, process them, etc. I was trying to distract myself and instead my internal squirrels took me there anyway.
As I started writing this, I had just finished watching an online video, nobody I knew, about a blind woman who was reluctant to put a lot of energy into a wedding that would no longer be her dream experience, and yet her photographer cum organizer created some really special techniques for her other senses. Sad in some ways but mostly happy, and I started bawling like a baby. FOR NO REAL REASON. It wasn`t that universally amazing, I didn’t know her. There was no real emotional content for me in the story, yet it wiped me out. Because my emotions are so fragile these days, or maybe just raw. I’ve been doing a bit of reading, and the most likely cause in these circumstances is the actual weight loss process.
It caught me by surprise. I assumed, as most do, that successful weight loss would lead primarily to simple feelings of happiness, but I am not naive enough to think it would cure all life’s ills either. But apparently the “heightened emotional response” can go hand in hand with weight loss.
First and foremost, lots of weight issues are tied to emotions…if you deal with the weight, it often digs up other emotions. Makes sense, and nothing new there in my view. I’d even go so far as to say I was mostly ready for it, it’s how I got to where I am.
But beyond that, I hadn’t really thought about some of the other aspects. Like that simply trying to lose weight in a visible fashion, such as taking pictures and sharing them on a blog (!), can make you feel extremely vulnerable and insecure. No longer am I hiding my true self, and thus in the parlance, I might feel exposed. (Check! By choice, because I need it to keep my motivation alive, but still check!).
That same process also attracts attention, and on a subject that I normally have shunned. I’m ill-equipped to handle it in whatever form I get as interactions (such as my normal Dive! Dive! Dive! response I mentioned in an earlier post). And regardless of the form of attention, my self-esteem is on the front line.
There are some who report anger (i.e., new attention from people makes people think the others are shallow or if the new attention isn’t supportive in the way they hope), fear, anxiety, disappointed, etc. It can even make people self-aborbed. (hmm for the first, check for the additional elements!).
Unfortunately, most of the advice out there is of the form, “The only way out is through”, and while I agree with the sentiment, it doesn’t do much to help me through the mental side of managing my emotions. The blog helps of course, as does trying to avoid comparisons, working on my self-confidence in other areas, and celebrating my achievements as I go. They also recommend setting aside time for self-reflection but I think I have that one already covered. 🙂
However, I think most importantly for me, I just have to be aware that my emotions are heightened and reactions like I’m having today are not uncommon. I just have to be ready for them. And buckle myself in for the ride.
I was trying to decide between several different topics for this week. One that is on my mind is a variation on “it takes a village” and the support that I’ve received since going public with my journey. Another is about my actual mechanical process for food, nutrition, tracking, etc. and appointments. Another wants to update on a bunch of miscellaneous things. But I jettisoned all of them because I have BREAKING NEWS.
On Monday of this week, I had my medical checkup and this was my 3-month benchmark since I had my original blood work done in September/October. I did the new blood work last Friday, and while they are checking lots of things to be safe, the big marker for the test is my A1C number.
For those not familiar with bloodwork and diabetes, the A1C measures “blood glucose levels”. Your red blood cells have hemoglobin proteins in them to transport oxygen around your body. Sugar / glucose can attach themselves to hemoglobin, and the specific type they attach to is hemoglobin A. When the two attach, it is called glycated hemoglobin (A1C). Some people have to monitor blood glucose levels every day by pricking their thumb at home, and it’s good for daily management, but the real BIG test is the A1C marker which has a lifespan of about 120 days. While your day to day stuff can fluctuate wildly, even within a single day or after a meal or workout, the A1C is basically treated as a 3-month average. So you do the bloodwork every three months to see how you’re doing. That’s an oversimplified explanation, but close enough.
Back in October, my number went to 7.1% i.e, 7.1% of my red blood cells were glycated. Below 5.5% is considered normal. 5.5 to 5.9 is “at risk” for diabetes, 6.0 to 6.4 is pre-diabetes, and 6.5 or higher is diabetes. There’s a bit of confusion out there about 6.5 or 7.0, and I don’t know if the number changed at some point or not, but some sites list diabetes as 7.0 or above, with a prediabetes as 6.5 to 7 and at risk from 5.5 to 6.5. Regardless, I’m going with the official Canadian Diabetes Association numbers, which are the under 5.5 / 5.5-5.9 / 6.0-6.4 / 6.5+ cutoffs.
My October numbers were the first ones I had done in two years, and I was now at 7.1. Previously I had only gone as high as 5.9, and while nobody ever explained the numbers, it was “hey you’re at risk” … but I had always been “at risk” anyway, with both being overweight and having a family history of diabetes. But since I hadn’t been tested in several years, and my weight increased in that time, I blew past the “at risk” cutoff (5.9) and the prediabetes cutoff (6.4) and into official diabetes territory. I commented previously that it didn’t really mean much to me, as it seemed almost incidental to my commitment to losing weight. It didn’t really change anything for me, other than triggering some extra meds.
But when I was blogging about non-scale indicators, my sister-in-law and others pointed out that the A1C number would be a good indicator. I confess I felt almost stupid … since I had dismissed the impact of the diagnosis, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the number either. But OF COURSE it would be a good non-scale indicator, duh!
Test results
So Friday was my test date. And I have my new A1C number. My previous was 7.1. My new one?
5.9, baby! Woot woot!
Oh, sure, I’m still in the “at risk” category, but I’ve basically put myself back to where I was 2.5 years ago. And since I have kept losing weight, all my various numbers are looking good.
For example, my untreated blood pressure once went as high as 160/110, which is stroke territory. At the time, I was maxing on decongestant, so maybe not a completely “fair” number, but without decongestant, I was still in the 140/100 range. With meds, I range from 115/85 to 130/98 or so.
Monday? My average at the office, which is often a bit higher than at home, was 111/75. Woot woot!
Medications
Which puts me in a different conversation about meds. I discussed them at some length with the doctor and then I also did a full check-up with one of the pharmacists at my regular pharmacy. My favorite pharmacist is in Peterborough of course, and my second favorite one is on vacation, so Hassan had to pinch-hit.
First up? My Metformin that I take to make my body process insulin better, and helps keep my A1C numbers under control. Some of the drop from 7.1 is from my weight loss, some from the diet changes, some from the medicine. They started me on a dose of 500 mg. I couldn’t tolerate it on my stomach, lots of cramps initially, so we cut it back to 250 mg with a plan to move to something called Jardiance. I finished my Metformin trial late last week and started the Jardiance on Saturday. One of the side effects of Jardiance is fatigue and apparently it can hit shortly after taking the medicine. Based on Saturday night and Sunday night, I wouldn’t want to be driving anywhere! Sure wiped me out fast.
However, since the Metformin was working, and even doing so at the low level of 250mg, we don’t need to actually switch me to Jardiance after all. So, I turned those pills back in, got a new Metformin prescription, and we set it at the lower dosage of 250 mg. It’s working, no need to increase is the logic. Interesting considering it is half the starting dose for most people, and some people even have to take 1500 mg a day. I’m happy with 250 mg.
For my blood pressure, I take two meds. Amlodipine and Hydrochlorothorazide. The Amlodipine is apparently not as effective as another drug, Ramipril, for those with diabetes, so we’re switching me over. Plus Amlodipine causes swelling of the ankles and calves which I have experienced. I will be happy to not have that, if it helps. I have to monitor though for the risk of the new medication taking my blood pressure TOO low, since at 111/75, I’m at the very low end of the med’s usage. When I lose another 25-30 pounds, we’ll need to revisit that amount…might have to reduce the dosage. I’m only at 5mg on the new one, so we’ve already reduced slightly. We’ll revisit the Hydrochlorothorazide in 3-6 months too but I might be able to get off that one completely and just use Ramipril for the future, and maybe even get rid of that one too eventually. Woot woot!
That leaves my Lansaprazole / Prevacid. I’d like to get off that too, but considering without it that my first “incident” had me thinking I was having a heart attack, I want to ensure the efficacy of whatever approach we take to weaning me on to something else. It might just be something like Tums or Gaviscon.
Although I confess that while I’m okay with doing that, I’m of two minds…first I need to be sure of the efficacy, but second that we are basically substituting a med that I have to pay for myself for one that is already covered. I can afford it, but I know there are lots of people out there who wouldn’t be too thrilled about shelling out extra cash for something each month if it is already “addressed” through their existing meds. I understand the health implications, and the reason to switch, I just find it a bit less obvious a decision than the medical professionals seem to think. None of them have asked at all about the cost implications to me. Again, fine for me, but what about others?
On the other hand, I just filled a prescription last week for two months of Jardiance but I only took it for two days and then gave it back for destruction. I’d like to think they would reuse the meds as they are in sealed individual blister packs, but I know they probably can’t. Meanwhile the benefit plan paid for them and I’m sure it’s not cheap.
Overall, I was at three meds before this started, and I’m up to four with a chance to be down to three in three months, two in six months, one in nine months, and maybe, maybe, maybe, none as of a year from now. Although, as my favorite pharmacist pointed out, I may still have one med to act as a protective / preventative med to make sure my body doesn’t get too worse at processing sugar. And so far at least, no injections. A friend was telling me about Trulicity working well for them, but so far, I don’t need it, everything I have is working well.
Woot woot! Even if the original diagnosis didn’t matter to me, I’ll take the 5.9 as an external indicator of progress.
I have been wanting to do a reading challenge for some time now, and each year I think I’m going to do the Good Reads one (with a 50 book pledge, for instance). But I feel the approach of just counting books is “off” somehow as a raw number isn’t really what I’m talking about. Would I feel twice as good if I read 50 books instead of 25? What about classics, should I only be counting classics? Is there a way to somehow add gamification to the mix?
Or when it comes right down to it, is all I’m hoping to do is keep track of the books I do read and actually get around to reviewing them? My “to be reviewed” pile is more virtual than real, but is still quite large.
What am I trying to do by participating in a Reading Challenge? I thought I would look at a bunch, see which ones appealed to me, and work backwards to figure out why. Somebody over at GirlXoXo (yes, that’s actually the name, and they ranked high in the Google search results so might as well start with them!) has compiled a list of 2019 reading challenges, so I thought I would wander through the list.
What’s out there?
The big list as of the time of review has some 88 different types of challenges in it, and dozens more in the comments, so let’s see what I find…
Pre-curated lists — Some of the lists pull from various Book of the Week/Month/Year lists, bestsellers or award winners that were generated by someone else (i.e. someone else made all the lists, the Reading Challenge is to pull some books off those various lists and read them);
Location — Either written in or taking place in a specific city, country, continent, planet, or in space;
Genre lists — Young adult, mystery, romance, fantasy, adventure, treasure, time travel, science fiction, coming of age, mythology, banned books, biography, historical fiction, alt-fiction, cozy,music, nonfiction, classics, “harder books”, art and creativity, dystopian, humour, multiple themes over the year, etc;
Origin — Books that were given to you, already in your library, borrowed from someone, borrowed from a library, found on Project Gutenberg, self-published, etc;
Series-based — All of a series, first in a series, next in a series, complete a trilogy, only backlists, etc.;
Time-based — By seasons, decades, birthdays, centuries;
The Title — First letter, or includes a word from a list (like a colour or a season), alliterative, three words long, etc;
Adaptation — Something that was turned into a TV show or movie, or vice versa;
Length — Really short or really long, or everywhere in between;
Formats — Paper, audio, or digital? Finals or ARCs?;
The Author — Alphabetical, gender, diversity, everything by one author, only dead authors, only new authors, etc.;
Named lists — Specific set of authors and/or books.
Some of the Challenges aimed for a specific schedule i.e. Month 1 was Book X, while others were more “a bunch of categories/check-boxes to complete over the course of the year”. Some of them add in gamification elements for sub-challenges (mini, weekly, monthly, quarterly). And others created little “bingo” cards to help encourage progress.
What appeals to me?
It sounds strange, but I really like the idea of gamification. Something like the bingo card approach that lets you have built-in mini-successes like a full-line, four corners, two lines, a row or a column, etc. And in the end, you get your full card. And, not for nothing, the Card approach works out to about 25 books for the year, i.e. one every two weeks with two weeks “off”. I’ll hit 25 books by the end of the first quarter, probably, but will they fit the card? That’s the REAL question. So I’m going to go with a bingo-style card.
From the broader list, I do like the idea of pulling from some pre-curated lists. I tried to create a master list for myself a few years ago using a number of “award” lists that were done — The Guardian, NYTimes, a bunch of others of the “Top 100” books of all time sort of thing. Plus I used some mystery award winners (Shamus, Anthony, Macavity, etc.). I almost caved when I found a fantastic website called The Greatest Books, which basically is a compilation of 119 OTHER lists of great books, and was just going to use their combined list, but since their combined list has 2073 titles in it, I thought I might stick to subsets.
I wasn’t that thrilled at first with the idea of an “origin” list (i.e. where did you get the book?) but as I thought about it, it grew on me. I do have a couple of books given to me that I haven’t gotten to yet, so an extra nudge would be good. Plus ones that are in my library in the “to be read” pile, some from the library, and I love the idea of something from Project Gutenberg.
In terms of genres, I’ll pretty much read anything but I do want to boost a couple of non-fiction titles, and I’ll cover mystery out the wazoo without even trying, but I might as well have a couple “better” ones on there. Series are too easy, I eat those for breakfast, lunch, dinner and several snacks in between.
I also like the ones that are alphabet-based…pretty easy to address, I think, so title and author are easy to add. Not sure the diversity ones work, as the “classifications” are a bit nebulous at times and I worry about the real metrics behind the approach. Almost like a social conscience quota — oh, good, you’re not a racist, you read an “author of colour”…I mean, wtf? This is 2019, not 1919, right?
My bingo card
As you’ll see, BINGO doesn’t quite work for me, even though I know it’s traditional, so I changed it to READS. And while I was originally thinking some books could show up in more than one place, I think they should be unique cells that get us to 25 in total for the year. Here are the explanations of the 25 cells:
Under the R:
A book whose title starts with A, E, I, M, Q, U or Y (“a” or “an” doesn’t count!);
A novel with an amateur detective (where “detection” isn’t their official job…even Stephanie Plum would qualify as she is a bounty hunter first, not a detective);
A book currently on the NY Times Best-Seller list (or, if desperate, from at least one week in 2018); and,
A book whose title starts with D, H, L, P, T, or X;
If you don’t particularly like mysteries, feel free to replace the AMATEUR DETECTIVE (under the R), MYSTERY AWARD WINNER (under the E), and FORMAL DETECTIVE (under the S) with suitable protagonists and awards for the genre of your choosing.
Let me know in the comments if you’re participating, and how you’re doing! I’ll post updates back to this page for my own reading through-out the year.
Last week, I talked about various performance indicators of success in my weight loss. Not surprisingly, the first group is my actual weight — using a simple weight scale to chart my success, failure or continued plateauing. Since you can make progress without losing actual weight, i.e. by shifting weight around, I am also doing body measurements. Third, I have more qualitative measures around psychology, physical elements, clothing, social, exercise and functional fitness. While some of the comments I received will be helpful in fine-tuning some of the indicators, and perhaps delving into wellness indicators (not entirely sure about that area yet), it seems to me that there is something missing.
Maybe it’s a hold-over from my childhood with the Canada Fitness Test where I couldn’t meet the standard, but I went looking for an objective test of fitness. I was apparently fairly naive in my approach. I thought I would punch “adult fitness test” into Google, and somewhere in the first couple of links, I would have a plethora of choices. Apparently that’s not quite what’s out there.
Don’t get me wrong, you do get hits almost immediately, and probably about 95% of them link to the same crowd-sourced link — the US President’s Challenge. This test was designed to take into account your age, sex, aerobic fitness (walking or running a set distance, heart rate, weight), muscular strength and flexibility (half sit-ups, sit and reach, push-ups), and body composition (BMI, height, weight, waist measurement). You enter all the information and submit it, and it will give you a fitness score. Sounds perfect, right?
Except it was established under Obama (President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports) and when Trump took over, it went into “permanent review”. Hence, no test. You can find out all the info from lots of sites about how to DO the test and all the steps, but one of the reasons they offered the test score online was to get you to submit your data for free to help inform their policy and program work. In order to get your score, you had to give them your data — no personal identifiers though — and they would spit out your score. Which means with the test “in review”, you can’t get your score and they don’t have the standards published online anywhere. Well, crap.
Well, no problem, there’s probably some sort of new version of the Canada Fitness Test, right? No, of course not. It got killed years ago because it encouraged body shaming for those who didn’t meet the standard. And knowledge of fitness has moved on from there, so not really the standard approach now (which is more about functional fitness).
Okay, reset. Who out there has to do fitness tests for adults? Ah-hah! The military! Of course, they must have some objective tests, let’s see what I find. Oh great, the Canadian military is in the process of switching from an old standard to a new standard. Well, at least there will be information on it. And there is. Broken down by the expected number of reps, age and sex of the candidate. Excellent. Let’s see…I’m going to need sandbags. Lots of sandbags. Wait, what?
Right, of course. A military fitness test is designed to test abilities, in theory, that a member of the military might have to have in a combat or rescue/emergency situation. So they have four elements in the test:
Sandbag lift — 30 reps of lifting a 20kg sandbag above a height of 1.0 m, alternating between two sandbags separated by 1.25m, have to complete it within 3m30s;
Intermittent loaded shuttles — 10 reps of carrying a 20kg sandbag 20m and back, alternating between loaded and unloaded bags, 400m in total, have to complete within 5 minutes and 21 seconds;
Sandbag drag — 1 rep without stopping of carrying a 20kg sandbag while dragging four 4 a total of 20m;
Rushes — Two rushes of 20m (there and back = 2 x 20m x 2 = 80m) where you start from prone position, dropping to prone position every 10m, have to complete within 51s;
Okay, that is pretty specific. So I thought I had an option for my test, even if it wasn’t very “normal” looking. Then I reached out to a friend in the Canadian military who basically said the test wasn’t very accurate of fitness levels, was too tailored to the military, and well, without being too pointed, that it was considered kind of useless by those in the know. But there are a lot of physical, political, organizational and social factors that go into coming up with a test like that, with a lot of stakeholders with a view, and well, the test is what it is.
Hmm…doesn’t sound very enticing, does it? Plus, I don’t really have a place to do sandbag shuttles every day to practice. I was hoping that perhaps some company was running fitness tests on retainer, and that perhaps I could piggy-back on their public offerings to just pay for a spot once a month. Okay, maybe not.
I checked out the US Military site, just to see what they have. It looked a little more traditional, a bit more like basic training in movies:
Height and weight
Body Fat
Two-mile run
Push-up
Sit-up
Hey! That looks a lot like the President’s Challenge! Great! Now, click here, click there, oh look, they have the standards. Run down the list, see if I’m a male of age 50, and I do x number of situps, I get y points. Perfect. Wait, points? What do the points mean?
Oh. You get points for each of the five areas, there is no “fail” area or “gold standard” really (nor an Award of Excellence) for any of the individual exercises, but you combine all the points and you get an overall score. Which is doable, except there’s also seemingly no published standard for the overall score. Hmm…what if I started with a perfect score and worked backwards? If I draw down the official standards, then as a male in the age 47-51 age bracket, I would get:
Exercise / Points
100 Points
90 Points
80 Points
70 Points
60 Points
50 Points
Push-ups
59 reps
50 reps
42 reps
34 reps
25 reps
17 reps
Sit-ups
66 reps
57 reps
48 reps
39 reps
30 reps
21 reps
2 mile run
14m24s
15m42s
16m54s
18m12s
19m30s
20m48s
When I look at some other sites, all of which have some variations of the President’s challenge, a few say “if you’re a man, x number of pushups are good, or if you’re over 65, blah blah blah”. They don’t differentiate by age other than “over 65”. For the rare one or two that do, men my age were estimated that they should be able to do 13-15 pushups. So the 50 point threshold seems like a decent starting point. For situps, they recommended a goal of 33, somewhere around 65 points. A little different, although the one above was how many to do in a minute vs. how many to do at all. The 2-mile run numbers are a bit hard to compare as almost all of the other sites used different distances or focused on your heart-rate after doing the distance, not the time.
So the US Military stuff gets me in the ballpark, but where does that leave me? A bit narrowly focused, based on other pages. Let’s see if I can expand that a bit…
Strength
I’ve already covered sit-ups and push-ups. Various men’s fitness programs, magazines and websites vary around what a “strong” athlete looks like, but for basic fitness, the “good” target for bench pressing is 1.5x your body weight. So, let’s see, I would have to bench about 475 pounds. Oh, that’s funny. Now, if my goal is 185 pounds overall, that would be a target bench-press of 275 pounds. I have absolutely no idea if that would be easy, moderate or hard-core. I went back to some really old workouts and I wasn’t fully pushing, more interested in cardio, but I was only doing about 75 pounds. Ook.
Okay, a leg press was better for me. Recommended target is 2.25x your body weight. At the present, that would be 710 pounds. Lord. I might as well be trying to push a Buick. Final target when I reach my weight goal would be 415 pounds. Again, I have no idea if that is easy, moderate or hard-core. Relying on an old work-out sheet, I was able to do 200 without really pushing it, so I feel it might be at least doable eventually. Maybe I’m crazy though.
I’m also crazy when it comes to the old “flexed arm-hang” exercise though. It was my nemesis when I was younger, and somehow my brain thinks if I could do it properly now, it would signal to my body that I’m “in shape”. I can’t find much on what a flexed arm-hang would look like for timing, so I’ll probably have to develop that one myself. However, a few sites have info on doing pull-ups, and the recommendation is that a man of 50 years old should be able to do 10.
If I’m honest with myself, I should be doing chin-ups (palms facing) not pull-ups (palms outward) if I want to be closer to a flexed-arm hang, but chin-ups are easier than pull-ups (chin-ups use more biceps than pull-ups), so it’s a wash. And if I’m REALLY honest with myself, I’d love to be able to do five muscle-ups (a pull-up with a slight kick to get some momentum to get your waist up to the bar). Ever since I saw Stephen Amell (star of the show Arrow) do them in a training video, I thought they were so perfect-looking for someone in good shape working hard to do something. Here’s one of his videos:
And lastly, there is a REALLY weird item that I found in a bunch of places as a test of strength. From a kneeling position, you need to throw a basketball…it never says if you are throwing one-armed or double-armed, but the test is to see if you can throw it 75 feet. It’s weird, but I kind of like it. I’d even like to try it as a triple test — one-armed throw, overhead throw, and normal shot.
Speed & Endurance
So, as I noted above, most of the tests online use running a 1.5 m or walking 1 mile test and then testing heart rates. For straight time, they suggest the 1.5 miles should be done in 12:00 to 14:25. Or, if I was looking at the military times for 2 miles, basically the same time they have as the gold standard to do another half-mile too. If I stuck to that overall “gold” standard of the military, and applied it at an even pace throughout the run, it would be 1.5 miles in 10:48 (100 points) or 15:22 (50 points). So the generic 12-14:25 is about the middle.
Most of the tests recommend the “perfect” test being a full V02 test where you get hooked up to breathing masks and heart monitors like you see in TV and movies with someone running on a treadmill. Not the easiest test to do or come by, so no.
There are three that crop up as just binary “can you do them” standards. Two are pretty simple — one is running 5km and the other is treading water for 2 minutes and then swimming 20m. The third involves a 12″ step where you step up with your dominant foot, then your second so you’re standing fully on the step, step down with dominant foot and lower your second foot. Repeat continuously for three minutes. Presumably they could all be modified — run 1km, then 2km, etc. or tread water for 1 minute before swimming or tread for 2 minutes and then swim only 10m.
And then there are two that are not so much about endurance as specific speeds: running 300 yards in under 1 minute or swimming 700 yards in under 12 minutes. Obviously, those two could be easily converted to a more graduated number (300 yards in 2 minutes or swimming 700 yards in 20 minutes, etc.) for a varied standard.
While I can do these exercises, in theory at least, it is hard to figure out exactly how graduated the various levels would be to match the original “scoring” of the military test.
Movement
I feel like I don’t have the right elements for movement and agility/flexibility. All the tests out there basically use the “sit and reach” test that was included in the President’s Challenge. Basically you put your heels on a tape measure at 15″ (so your 0″ is somewhere around your knees), and then you lean forward and touch the floor beside the measuring tape. The higher the number (i.e. reaching past your toes) is good. 16″, 17″, 18″. The recommendation for men over 50 is somewhere around 17″. As with above, I could modify that to give scoring like with the military one. Of course, the first step is just being able to TOUCH my toes while sitting, but let’s not quibble at this point.
I am not sure the fascination with basketball in these tests, probably the availability of the court, but for a vertical height test, they basically recommend trying to reach and touch a basketball rim. For junior high through to the NBA, that height is relatively fixed at 10 feet. Most of the tests suggest jumping next to a wall and slapping the wall at various heights to see how high you are jumping if you can’t reach the rim. If I’ve learned anything from movies, it’s that White Men Can’t Jump, and it sure as hell applies to me. I’m not even sure I could whiff the net on a court.
Again, if I’m honest with myself, there are two better indicators of my jumping ability that interest me. First and foremost, I don’t want to touch the rim, I would want to be able to dunk a basketball. That would be my top standard. Touching the rim is good, sure, but true performance would require me to get even higher.
Secondly, I love watching American Ninja Warrior, and I am inspired not so much by their stories of change and perseverance but by the sheer abilities they have to get from A to B. I don’t have the courage to try true parkour running, but I saw a video of one of my favorite ANW athletes, Jessie Graff, doing vertical jumps onto a surface. Most people do them on to boxes, Jessie jumps onto whatever is handy.
You can buy actual boxes and stands to do this on, and the sizes range from as low as 14″ up to 30″. Of course, lots of people then stack the boxes in gyms or pile up large mats. Or if you are Jessie, you use large tires and mats to get up to 55″ with a running start.
I probably shouldn’t use her performance as my target height though.
Lastly, there is a balance test. You are basically supposed to be barefoot, stand on one leg, and place the second leg bent in a triangle (foot to your shin or knee that you’re balancing on). For those of you who have done yoga, you know this is the beginner Tree Pose. In an ideal yoga world, you’d get the heel of your second foot all the way up to your thigh, but for now, it is just a simple balance test and the “simpler” version is on your shin or knee. And you hold it. The test standard suggests a 30 second hold, once on each leg. I don’t know if this is a great “standard” or test element in the long run, but it seems like a decent starting point. While other yoga moves will increase stability and balance, this might work as a simple overall test of balance and basic agility.
A reality-check
I am not likely to automatically meet ANY of these test standards at the level I want to meet them, even when I drop to 185 pounds. I can get the weight down, it doesn’t say anything about my functional fitness – strength, endurance and movement. However, that’s a job for my new BowFlex and yoga exercises to help with. I will come back to the “fitness” test with an actual standard and my performance in a few months (perhaps once Poly Spring hits after April 15th). For some of the tests, I’m going to need help, such as having Jacob time me for laps or running, for example. My heart results came back normal when I did my stress test, so I’m all clear for everything, but I can’t even attempt these tests until I have some basic fitness improvements. Heck, I couldn’t even DO one chin or pull-up at this point. And my knees would NEVER allow me to run.
