A Mid-month Health Check Up

I have recently joined a new gym and yesterday I had the health assessment which comes with my membership. I have been a member of many gyms over the years, so I am no stranger to the induction and health assessment circus. However, I found this one much more focused on general health instead of physical fitness, which was an odd experience for me. While they took my height and weight as usual, they did not do a body fat scan or measurement of any kind. They also did not do an exercising fitness or VO₂ max test, but only calculated my VO₂ max from my resting heart rate (and age, weight, etc.). Instead they took my blood pressure, a pin prick cholesterol and blood glucose test, and were more concerned with general health factors such as sleep, smoking and alcohol use.

The bad news is that according to their calculations, my VO₂ max is only 36 ml/kg/min, which is entirely average. Given the running I do, I was expecting it to be at least 40! The good news is that I scored well on the rest of the general health tests, including recording a resting heart rate of 57 bpm. The even better news is that my new eating and exercising regime appears to be working as I have lost a kilo! This means I am bang on track to have lost two kilos by the end of the month, despite struggling to keep my daily calories below 1800. Maybe I don’t need to stress about the calorie count quite as much!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1906.76	102.99g	245.89g	56.86g	0	26.7g
	21.6%	51.6%	26.8%
Calories burned through exercise:		398

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
07:15	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson’s Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Mesa Sunrise cereal	60g
	Alpro Soy milk	120mL
	Sainsbury's orange, mango and passionfruit juice	200mL
10:00	Sponser Isotonic sportdrink, fruit mix	about 58g
	in water	750mL
10:15	Easy Run
11:15	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
13:15	Princes Tuna chunks (in brine, drained)	67g
	with Hellmann's light mayonnaise	13g
	and Branston gherkin relish	10g
	on Genius brown bread toast	2 slices
	Spinach	25g
	Tomato	85g
	The English Provender Balsamic Italian Dressing	15g
14:00	Green Tea	300mL
16:00	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
17:00	Brazil nuts	8g
	Cashews	15g
	Seedless Red Grapes	100g
20:00	Leon's Chicken, Pumpkin and Borlotti bean stew	307g
	Sainsburys Freefrom iced rich fruit cake slice	1 slice
21:00	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill
	Camomile, honey and vanilla tea	200mL

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.