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:

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.

Baby steps, but at least I have a destination.

Last week’s post was the scariest one for me so far, me alone with my numbers and photos. After that, I was originally going to talk about metrics and other reporting this week, but I decided to go a bit sideways and instead talk about who I’ve brought along on the journey from an external professional standpoint, the team that I’ve put in place to help me survive the journey.

For overall context, I feel that in most areas of my life, I am pretty self-sufficient on the psychological front. Most things I can either handle on my own, or I know how to figure out how to get help / who to seek help from in order to handle it. When my mother passed away, grief was kicking my ass about a year after her death. The efforts to settle her estate kind of delayed part of the impact, and then when that was done, grief came flooding in unexpectedly. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why none of my mental processes and analytical functions were working to help me figure things out, but I dismissed grief as a likely cause. I felt it must be something else because she had been gone for a year already, but I didn’t realize that grief often manifests itself as a wet blanket over top of everything, dampening things down, lowering energies so that when I asked myself if it was “grief” that was bothering me, my internal diagnostic came back as “no”. In fact, EVERYTHING I tried came back as “no”. I needed help.

So I decided to give our Employee Assistance Program at work a try. I called, told them I wanted to talk to someone about stress and depression (I was mentally run down), they asked me politely if I was suicidal or going to harm anyone else, I said no, and so they referred me to a counselor in my neighbourhood. I was offered two or three to choose from, I chose one, and they authorized three initial meetings with an option to do up to eight.

The woman I went to see is named Shirley, and she’s a retired social worker who used to work at the Ottawa Children’s Treatment Centre, now part of CHEO. She is almost the perfect choice for me…some of what I wanted to talk about included Jacob, and how I handle things with him, and she has 20+ years of dealing with kids and parents of kids with Cerebral Palsy (which is similar to what Jacob experiences). I had no need to go into the basics, she knew EXACTLY what I was talking about. She’s a social worker by training and practice, not a psychologist or psychiatrist, although she works under the supervision of an overall psychologist for the purposes of the business model. We did the first three sessions, I extended it for five more, and between us, we got me back on track. A mental tune-up, if you will.

A few years later, I wasn’t feeling quite right, so we did another three sessions as a mental tune-up. I like her, feel comfortable with her, and she’s given me some really good insights to think about over the sessions. As an aside, I had a real problem with something at work back in late January, and I was having real trouble “letting it go”. Shirley was out of the city for an extended period, so I saw a specialist in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Wow, *that* was an experience. It was helpful, but a way more active form of counselling, not my style at all. It was easy enough to deal with in two sessions but still.

So I don’t have trouble asking for psych help, and she’s a good resource and I’ve met with her a few times in recent weeks (I’ll come back to that later). Yet with my big plan in place as of mid-summer, I knew I needed other types of help with my weight loss, and a lot more guidance. I just don’t have much previous capacity in those areas.

On the health front, I’ve mentioned before that I really don’t like the supervising physician that I’m assigned to in my doctor’s practice. We just don’t get along well. So when I can, I choose to see the intern / resident instead. Anyway, in mid-summer, I went in, met the new intern (Dr. Ali), and said, “Okay, let’s do this. What do I need to do first before I start such a massive change?”.

First up was some blood work. And we had meant to do a stress test a couple of years ago but scheduling was a problem, I was on a waiting list, and then I somehow disappeared from their waiting list or something. It wasn’t urgent, but still, I wanted one. So we booked that. I already wrote about my experience with the first stress test (#50by50ish #36 – A stress test with a side of manscaping) and I did the bloodwork the same day.

I immediately got a call a day or two later — come see us now, Dr. Ali needed to talk to me about the bloodwork. In the blog post mentioned above, I was expecting one of several possible outcomes of the bloodwork. It might have been that I was high for something related to diabetes. Because there is diabetes in my family, and I’m carrying extra weight, they always want to test for that. But it has always comes back negative. Not even close. Alternatively, it could have been some sort of infection (my ears were giving me problems unrelated to blood pressure). Or it could have been some completely unrelated item about cholesterol or my thyroid or something else that spiked. I was mostly worried about the fact that I also have large lymph nodes and regular headaches, so I had asked them to check some protein markers.

As it turns out, it was about diabetes. My AC1 number had blown up in the last two years — I went from “not close” through “pre-diabetes” and now officially a 0.1 step into officially being diabetic.

But the diagnosis meant nothing to me. I don’t mean that I didn’t understand it, I mean that it meant nothing new. I already knew my weight was affecting me, I already knew I needed to make changes to my diet, it wasn’t at a level to require insulin, and so nothing really changed. I was in the same situation before the diagnosis as after, more or less. That seems incredibly weird to me, but it really didn’t change anything in my approach. Except in a round-about way, it did. Since I am officially diabetic, and a new diabetic at that, four things happened at once.

First, I get to go on a higher-priority list for all follow-up. I’m no longer on the routine “let’s check this out” list, I’m on the “do this reasonably soon” list. Works for me. I’m not on the “TEST HIM NOW” list, but I get relatively quick referrals.

Second, my diagnosis automatically triggers offers of additional supports through a diabetes clinic. I get a nurse (Rosie) who works in their social worker unit (although most of what she does is talk to me about foot care, not a small issue for diabetics), a registered dietician (Genevieve) to go through my diet with me and answer questions, and at my request, access to a kinesiologist (Anna) to help me figure out some of my plans for exercise.

I’ve already had my first big session with the nurse, Rosie, and as I said, it was all about my feet. No real concerns, my circulation shows fine for now.

The time with the dietician was more instructive. I had already gone through a bunch of online materials two weeks earlier and changed my diet, so when I met with her, almost all of it was her answering my questions, I already had covered the basics.The biggest challenge for me is a form of binge-eating, not the classic view of binge-eating of wolfing down a whole gallon of Rocky Road ice cream. My problem? Eating large amounts at irregular intervals. So my primary changes are:

1. Eating breakfast…I am not a morning person, I’m a night owl. So when I get up in the morning, I am frequently out the door ten minutes after getting dressed, and that includes a bathroom stop. When I say that I “skipped breakfast”, I mean that I would only have had something to eat before 10:30 a.m. on average about 1-2 days per month. Very rarely. Now I make sure I have SOMETHING decent every day.
2. Drink more…I suck at consuming water during the day, mostly because I have very bad experiences with water coolers. Almost every time I’ve tried to up my game to drink more water each day, and start using the coolers, I get sick almost immediately. A cold, the flu, something. I’m also terrible at plain water. I thought that was the only option, as I don’t like adding lemon or cucumber thingies, but the dietician approved a couple of flavourings that I showed her that are just fine. I’m still not doing great on this, too many days where I have gone most of the day with nothing other than the morning yogourt drink or something, so definitely a work in progress.
3. Sugary drinks…This one was bothering me, not because I didn’t know I should dump them, but more because I didn’t know what would be left as a replacement. As I said, I don’t like plain water normally, too raw on my throat, etc., and if I eliminated soda, I was screwed. I knew that you’re not supposed to have too much milk, I don’t like tea or coffee, I don’t drink alcohol, and honestly, there aren’t a lot of other choices available that I even like. I could dump the regular drinks and switch to diet, and while it would be better to have none of them, the dietician showed me that in limited quantities, the diet sodas were viable options. Plus, as I noted above, the flavoured water was okay as my main “go to” choice.
4. Snacks…Most people think of the change for snacks as switching to healthy ones, and that was part of it, but more important for me was simply HAVING a snack. I am really terrible at this. This has actually been a source of tension at times with Andrea…we would be doing something, and she would go 3 hours without at least a snack and be ready to pass out; meanwhile, I had skipped breakfast, had no snack, drank nothing, and I was still raring to go. Probably cranky, but still okay. And at work, the scenario was not regular but not uncommon for me to get to work in the morning without having anything except a yogourt drink on the way, sometimes not even that, no snack, working away, and the next thing I know it is 3:30 p.m. and I’m feeling peckish, but suddenly realizing the last thing I ate was almost 20 hours earlier for supper. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds. But I wasn’t dying of hunger or anything, in fact, sometimes I only noticed because of the time, not hunger. And yes, the dietician explained what my body was doing during that time to compensate, almost none of it good. I guess I just felt that my extra fat reserves were at least good for something.

As noted above, the dietician helped fine-tune what I had already figured out. Most of my new plan was one she approved of and thought was looking great. She wondered if I had enough variety to keep it interesting during the day, so I’ve tried to expand a few things her and there. And she was able to answer certain “this or that” type questions as to which was better.

I confess, I thought she was going to suggest a lot more changes, that I didn’t have it quite right, and thus give me a “diabetes diet” to follow. But from the first health appointment to the meeting with her, I was already almost six weeks in, so I had already made most of my changes. And she pointed out, there is no such thing as a “diabetes diet”, it is just healthy eating that everyone should do. Which I guess is true, but I felt like the diabetes diagnosis DID help with my diet choices — I went from having an almost infinite variety of diets and diet advice out there to wade through, and suddenly had it all more narrowly focused on diabetic-friendly advice. 

I haven’t met with the kinesiologist, Anna, yet, as I have had to move the scheduled appointments around a bit.

The third thing that changed was that it gave the doctor some ideas for changes to my medicines. For example, I’m on blood pressure meds and there are some that work better for diabetics, so she wants to transition me. As well, another med helps the body handle insulin usage so I’m trying to work that into my regime without shortcircuiting what I’m already doing/taking.

Oddly enough, when the doctor gave me the diagnosis regarding the diabetes, she said almost in passing, as part of her encouragement, that “even” losing 20 pounds could be helpful. And I laughed. I actually laughed. I didn’t mean to be rude, but she was asking me to try to help her help me by my losing 20 pounds, rather than the reality that I’m planning to lose 157 pounds and she’s along for the ride. I might even describe my reaction as almost scoffing at her. When I went back later for a follow-up and told her that I already passed the first 25 pound mark, I think she was almost shocked. Very few patients do that, I know. But the diabetes diagnosis wasn’t a motivational factor for me, it was more an afterthought for what I’m already doing.

The fourth and final part goes back to my mental health mentioned above. I am doing okay, but I am confronting a big-ass dragon in a cave, I am saying openly that it is tough, I’m feeling scared AF on certain posts, and it occurred to me. — shouldn’t I have another professional in the mix? Not as part of the Employee Assistance Program, I felt that was more for acute issues than planned / regular mental health care, but just for my own mental well-being?

So I made some appointments with Shirley again, the social worker who helped me work through the grief and with mental tune-ups previously.

Which means, I have a decent team of professionals:

• Dr. Ali, the overall doctor who will be around for most of the journey;
• Rosie, the nurse, to help me monitor foot care issues and potential circulatory challenges;
• Genevieve, the dietician on demand, to help me modify my diet regime as I go;
• Anna, the kinesiologist. to help me figure out some decent exercise options (some people prefer a personal trainer, and I may do that at some point, just not what I need right now, which is more planning advice); and;
• Shirley, my therapist/counselor/social worker, to help me through the mental anguish and to help me chase down random squirrels.

Shirley cautioned me with last week’s post, asking me if I was sure that such a drastic step was possible or needed. I understood her concern, and I’m glad she raised it. But I was sure. And I feel I was right. The relief I have felt in the last few days of having that over and done with, at least for the first time ever, was almost a mental cleanse. I’m more focused, I’m more attuned to some of my issues, I’m more patient with my progress. Well, generally. I’m down about my current plateau.

I had another session with Shirley today, heavily focused on the upcoming six weeks. My previous project at work was finishing, and I didn’t have a new one starting right away, so I took advantage of the lull to take six weeks leave from work just to focus on me. Not great for the paycheque, true, but I am hopeful it will help me through the time and maybe kickstart some of my exercise options too.

Yet I still have a somewhat tightly-bound set of issues to deal with, and we’re coming up on a stressful time of year where two of my frequent coping tools — drink and food — are not available to me. It is not as bad as an alcoholic having to get through a bunch of social occasions where everyone is drinking, but there are some similarities in there for me. I am worried that I won’t be able to maintain my commitment and resolve, or that I’ll feel self-conscious with every bite, since I’ve been more open about my weight loss and now everyone knows.

In the meantime, I have Dr. Ali, Rosie, Genevieve, Anna, and Shirley to back me up. I may need more professionals in the mix before the journey is over, but for now, this is my external medical team — five women advising me on how to save my life.