pink eye...

Alright, my lack of posting is because on Monday I woke up with pink eye in, not one, but both of my eyes! Yay! So because looking into any light caused me pain I have held off on blogging.
That doesn't mean I have failed at eating- maybe a little at the exercise part, but considering I could barely keep my eyes open, I figured walking on treadmill might be just a tad dangerous!

I went back to Dr. Chris Morgan on Wednesday to check on my progress and have another BIA test.
These are the results of my first one compared to my second one- only a week apart.
The cool thing is that I have lost 3.5 lbs on the scale but if you look on the fat mass line, I have actually lost 5 lbs of fat and gained a little bit of water weight, which as my body gets to used to drinking all the water I am putting in myself it will let go of it. That made me super happy knowing that just because the scale says one thing, doesn't mean that that is exactly what is happening in my body.

 Now, this next picture (sorry about the crappy lighting in both pics, I took them on my iPhone and it didn't do a great job lighting wise.) Shows where I started in relation to Phase Angle, Intracellular Water, Fat Mass, and ECM/BCM.

I didn't know what all that really meant so I assume maybe you wont either?
Let me explain them as my booklet does...

Phase Angle - Calculated using the measurements of resistance and reactance, which are indicators cellular health independent of weight. Normal values vary with age and gender.

So my Phase Angle started at 6.6, it should be greater than 7.4. Right now my Phase Angl (PA) is the same as a healthy 50 year old- Not cool! But as you can see in my BIA, in just one week my PA went from 6.6 to 7.0. Thats crazy!

Intracellular Water - Water volume of body cell mass (i.e., water in the "living" cells)


So my ICW was at 52.5 the first day, which is pretty close to the cells of a 60 year old! Man, this was an eye opener to just how unhealthy I had let my body become. Then, within one week I raised it 53.7, which is a step in the right direction and at least now I am getting closer to a 50 year old in that department too :)

Fat Mass - The amount of stored fat in the body


Okay so this one is pretty self explanatory, But this is where I learned I lost 5 lbs of fat instead of the 3.5 lbs my scale said. The first day I was 70.9 lbs of fat- yikes!! and in one week that had gone down to 65.9 lbs of fat in my body. And my lean body mass had increased by 1.5 lbs.

ECM/BCM - Ratio of extracellular mass (ECM) to body cell mass (BCM). A lower value, indicating a higher ratio of living to inactive mass, is desirable. Normal values are near 1.0 (a 50/50 distribution).


So here I started out at 1.04, you want to be 1 or lower I was told so I'm not too far off but still it could be better. Then within one week I got to a 1.01.

I love seeing the numbers change!

Another cool thing that Dr. Morgan showed me was that I had done a few BIA tests before I got pregnant with Owen while I was losing weight. I can't remember the results exactly- I'll see if I can find my printouts or next week I will get a copy of them, but it showed that even when I was 163 lbs my Phase Angle, ICW, and pretty much everything that was measured was actually worse off then than it is now even though I weigh more!
I realized that what I did to lose weight before, which was counting calories but still eating whatever I wanted and exercising, made me lose weight but my cells and insides were still suffering and not anywhere near 'healthy'. It was kind of an eye opener. I guess it's like those skinny people who eat fast food all the time and never gain a pound- I bet if they did a BIA, I could possibly have a 'healthier' body even thoughI may weigh 50 lbs more than them. Not that I want to stay this weight- no way- but it's nice to know I am moving in the right direction!