Masochistic as I am, I agreed to have an appointment with a personal trainer today at 8am (just to make it clear: it was part of a sign-up package at the gym, not that I would schedule such meeting myself). First, I would like to start with complaint that he was not hot. Hello? Isn’t that part of a deal that they should look absolutely gorgeous to motivate us, mortal and weak humans, to work harder in order to achieve such perfect body shapes as they have? And what’s the point anyway of having a personal trainer (or physiotherapist, masseur) if there is nothing interesting to look at? Second, the whole meeting was pretty much useless and the only interesting thing that I learnt today was my body fat content. The magic box said that it is 20.2%. And here the problem starts. Because according to the standardized tables, females have 10-12% essential fat, 14-20% is what athletes have (me! Athlete!), 21-24% means that you are very fit, 25-31% is acceptable and only above 32% it is considered that you have too much body fat (so basically you are overweighed). So theoretically my fat content is pretty much perfect. However, both the scale and the mirror say just the opposite. So whom should I trust? The scale and the mirror against the magic box, I guess that’s 2 to 1 for loosing some weight. But what if the magic box is right?
Right now I weigh 65kg and the past experience says that I look the best when I weigh 55-57kg. That means that I should loose 10kg. Now, 20% of 65kg is 13kg. So if I would loose 10kg, I would have only 3kg body fat left (in an optimistic variant, in which I only loose fat, and not brain, for example), which would be equal to 5.5% (3kg/55kg) and that would constitute (again according to the standardized tables) a health hazard. So much for the standardized tables. Never trust scientists ;-)