Admittedly I'm just showing off...

In the week since my parents returned home to England I've been making a big effort to get back into being healthy. Not that I was THAT unhealthy while they were here, I did go to the gym a few times and took a few surfing lessons, but I've been feeling like all the eating out and drinking - so much drinking - had taken it's toll and I was feeling a bit disgusted by myself. Long story short I was ripe for being coerced into participating in Project Fit, a corporate team weight loss challenge, as motivation to stick with healthier habits for a few months in the run up to the festive season and this week we had to go our initial weigh in.

I stopped by the gym this morning to have my measurements taken by some fancy pants machine, the 'InBody 230', a 'body composition analyzer' that spits out a bunch of measurements like Total Body Water - 66.5lbs in my case. Apparently this is good relative to my total weight of 121lbs and not a sign that I am retaining water or anything. "It's good to be hydrated," said my cute toned hottie of a 20-something trainer - your skeletal muscle mass - 49.6lbs in my case of which 24.3lbs is dry lean mass, whatever that means. I'm guessing it's my poundage excluding all the bones and organs and other icky stuff, but I could well be wrong - and finally your Body Fat Mass - 30.2lbs in my case, well within the normal weight range.

"These are the best results I've seen all day," said my trainer. I beamed until I realized that they hadn't even been open an hour and so he couldn't have seen that many people.

"And well...considering THIS," he exclaimed pointing to my age at the top of the page.

It's okay, you can say it, I'm 40, it's not catching if you say it out loud. I'm by no means embarrassed about it - even if it does make me a pariah in the online dating world, but I refuse to lie - in fact people are always so surprised by my age that I'm considering having "I'm 40 you know" t-shirts made so that I can reap the benefits of astounding strangers too, because everyone assumes I'm 35 tops!! Moisturize and stay out of the sun people!!

"Well....wow," said Trainer Bloke "you're doing really well!! I see people in their 20s who are not as fit as you."

Check me and my body of a twenty-something, ha ha!! I was thrilled, although admittedly I am not the best participant for my team given the goal is to lose body fat and I don't have much wiggle room to decrease by much*. According to my print out I could stand to lose 2.9lbs, but "why bother," said Trainer Bloke, "everything is normal, just keep it up!!"

Being a big data nerd the results were all very interesting to me, especially being so positive. I felt fabulous after learning I was fit and healthy and exactly where I should be and bounced down to Starbucks after my appointment and indulged in a turkey bacon breakfast sandwich - apparently I need 1,261 calories just to stay ALIVE!! Lucky 5ft 7 Megan gets a good 300 calories more than me. The healthy eating starts tomorrow ;-)


*Surely these challenges should also reward people who start out healthy and stay healthy. It always feels like they are promoting weight loss a bit more strongly than they are promoting health.