External evaluation

(Warning: very much body talk in here, feel free to scroll on past.)

I don’t think I mentioned that last week I scheduled my first ever fitness evaluation at my work gym. I resisted this for a long time. I’m one of those extremely internally motivated people, who starts to get pissed off when other people judge or expect things from me. "Imma be fit, but imma be fit on my own terms damnit! You can’t tell me what to do!" But on the other hand, I am not a coach or a professional and my fuckarounditis was getting severe and I’m not sure what to do next or even what direction I should be looking at. So… at 8am today I submitted to being measured and assessed.

The test itself wasn’t so terrible, it was definitely easier than a HIIT class; the toughest bits were a minute of (full!) pushups (25) and of half sit-ups (27). The cardio test was stepping up onto a step to a (pretty slow) beat for 3 minutes, getting my heart rate read, and then a minute later having it read again. The tl;dr of the test: strength is above average, cardio is excellent, flexibility is needs improvement, and body fat is 33%.

That last bit… so that’s come down by ~10% over the last year. It’s still a bit higher than maybe it should be ("overfat" in the lingo). But the last few months my cut had some bad effects – period stopped, libido gone, not sleeping or recovering well, plus I’d stopped losing weight and was bingeing (which was NEVER a problem for me before). Pretty much I looked at my life and said "I am a wreck and I need to eat more." And based on that, I had kind of planned this evaluation to be a baseline for a recomp; I’d go back to eating at maintenance and work out hard and see what happened.

After the test, I went and did my workout (just a normal bench/upperz day, though today will be my first 2-a-day with $husband in the evening) and had some deep thoughts. After I was done lifting, I went back to the guy who evaluated me and asked "So… based on my results, do you think I should recomp or should I cut more?" He thought for a moment and said, "Well, you could probably cut more first." Ugh. We had a chat (along with another gym staffer, who is a lovely woman who’s been encouraging me for a while, and who has a more strong lady-centric view of fitness) and after I told them about the problems during my cut, they suggested a much gentler cut, and basing it on a weekly timeframe rather than daily for more flexibility. I’m still concerned, but hopefully there will be enough feedback from my body that I can adjust as I go.

I’m meeting with them again next week, when they’ll have a workout plan for me that should incorporate the big lifting/2 a days with $husband/love for running/need for flexibility improvement that I’m looking for. It’s a little bit terrifying. I’m getting ready to take a leap of faith and get a little more serious. We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

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