my first biometric screening (tm)

That's it. I am officially going to start referring to myself as a Healthy Living Blogger. Y'know, despite the fact that I drink beer. And wine. And the occasional hard liquor. And more coffee than your average village in Columbia. And eat lots n' lots of cheese. Some of it in the form of large bowls of mac n' cheese. And, oh yeah, I also eat limited edition confetti poptarts. And at least one brownie every Friday ever since I've been forced to go to this lunchtime conference at work where there's a whole table full of them. And I get less than 6 hours sleep a night most nights of the week. And I do "cardio" not cardio. But yes, boys and girls, despite this plethora of regrettable health habits which should serve as inspiration to actually no one, I stand before you today (ok, I sit before you balancing my laptop on my crossed legs, which is also a shitty health habit) and declare myself Queen of Healthy Living.

My HDL yesterday was 74.

I'm sure everyone reading this is aware, because *you* are all in tune with your health and fitness n' shit, but optimal value for HDL (i.e. "good cholesterol") is 60 or above. Fourteen muthafucking points over optimal, okay? I feel like I should have been given a gold star. Or a t shirt with the number on it. Something. Nope, all I got was a cheery, "You exercise, don't you! 'Exercise is medicine.'"

How'd this all come up, anyway? Well. As part of my shiny new employer-contributed-to health insurance, we have a thing every June wherein if you do three simple things (an online survey, an attestation that you do not smoke, and an in-person biometric screening in the cafeteria) you receive $400 off your health insurance for next year. And my screening was yesterday. They did a finger stick for (non-fasting) cholesterol. They took my blood pressure. (I tanked on that because I have documented "white coat" syndrome.)  They weighed and measured me and provided me with my BMI. The good news is that my BMI is 21. The bad news is that OMFG I am now 5'1.  I have shrunk a whole inch. I was so outraged by this, lulz, that she did it twice to make sure. Nope, 5'1. At this rate, I will be 4'11 by the time I'm 80.  

I'm looking into one of these.

Not srs. 

Well, a little srs.  I don't WANT to end up 4'11. Sad face.

The other blow to my ego was that they tested my body fat percentage with one of those handheld doohickeys and, despite my firm conviction that I am about 22-23% body fat, the bastard thing told me I'm 26%.  Not too outraged over that because I know those handheld things are inaccurate enough to be basically worthless and change wildly just due to how hydrated you are and so forth, but also because according to the little chart the cheery nurse showed me, a woman my age is optimally *supposed* to have between 24-32% body fat. So, yeah, I'm perfect there too.  

Queen of Healthy Living, all y'all. 

Cough.

xoxo