On Thursday of this week my employer offered a “Know Your Numbers” workshop in conjunction with our health insurance company.  If you came in, they measured your weight, blood pressure, height, BMI, and total cholesterol.  If you participated, you got to log your numbers online at their website to earn a $75 dollar gift card. They used a digital scale, and I was proud to tell them it was wrong by almost 5 lbs. Having weighed myself all year each week at home and at the gym, I knew exactly how much I should have weighed (247 maximum, 245 minimum) and they clocked me at 251!

That aside, my HDL cholesterol was too low, by about 8mg. My TC/HDL Ratio was over by about 1.8.  The average put me at 187 total which is pretty good since below 200 is optimal. Go figure.

My BMI was 35, so yeah, I’m considered obese.  Yay me!

My blood pressure was 138 over 92. Optimal is under 120 over 80.

Kind of depressing, isn’t it?  But still puts things into perspective for me for the year so I was glad to have it done and will spend the $75 with a smile on my face!

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Also this week, I decided not to invest in protein bars.  After reading and researching, I discovered for the most part their calorie count is too high for the little bit of protein you get from them.  Fiber One does make a 90 calorie bar that’s 20% of your daily fiber.  But guess what?  Only 3g of Protein and 9g of sugar!

A close friend who has a son who went to school for nutrition also emailed me Saturday morning.  She’d been telling her son about my dieting and exercise and mentioned to him that I had been looking into the whole protein shake and protein bar thing.  He suggested avoiding protein bars too because they are “cooked” and actually contain very little protein than what they advertise.  Yep, I can get more protein and less calories from a good turkey sandwich than I can a protein bar.   He also gave some good suggestions on what kind of protein shake mix to look for.

The Body Fortress stuff that I mentioned in last week’s post is okay.  It’s a third of the protein I need for the day and tastes pretty good when mixed with Almond Milk and a bit of yogurt, but when examining the label a bit closer I noticed it has 50mg of cholesterol per serving!  Yikes!  For that alone, I’m not sure I’ll continue to use it.  It really just goes to show you that if you are going to use supplements and such, you really have to do your research.  Sure, the low calories and high protein are a plus, but there are always other factors to consider when something seems too good to be true.

No walking this weekend since J was out of town and it rained on Sunday.  I still hit the gym 3 days this past week.  Really looking forward to the 70 degree temp we are supposed to get on Monday and Tuesday.  I’ll probably spend half my lunch walking with the pedometer just to get out and get some exercise in.

Other than that, I’m still using My Fitness Pal and even turned a girl onto it at work.  She’s become just as obsessed with it as I am since you can scan products at the grocery store with it using your phone.