Yesterday, I had another DEXA Body Composition Test at Body Comp here in San Diego. It was more than a little embarrassing for me – but in a sick way, I earned the ‘results’.
For the past 100 or so days, I have been eating (mostly) like a freaking pig. Instead of my usual (fairly) clean diet (I call it a Live-It), I’ve been consuming pizza, ice cream, cookies, cakes, pasta, and donuts. I even drank a couple of half racks of beer like the ‘good ole days’. Between June 27th and October 2nd of this year (98 days), I gained 41.9 pounds – including 29.3 pounds of gross, ugly fat.
Not a pretty site – I didn’t enjoy it at all and feel like total crap because of it. Not only have gained a belly, but also man-boobs I never thought that I would be cursed with. My energy levels have tanked, I’m much more easily out of breath – and I even have to sit down to put my shoes on. I only have one pair of shorts that fit me (they have an elastic band) – and no pants that do. I’ve had to resort to wearing sweats on several occasions. For me, there are a couple of things that hurt bad: 1) I hate having fat thighs that rub together when I walk (waddle) and 2) I’m fat enough that even my wife is grossed out. Painful – and not necessarily in that order. Here are the major differences in my DEXA results in less than 100 days:
But, I keep telling myself it could have been worse …. Eating (and drinking) that way, the way that I used to and the way that many Americans are used to made me feel terrible. So terrible, in fact, that I could not get myself to do it every day – nor could I convince myself to keep going. My body and my mind crave to eat healthy, exercise, be healthy and feel good. So for a couple of extended stretches during the 100 days, I backed off and went back to eating clean. I honestly reached the point where I did not know if I would live if I kept on ingesting all that crappy (and oh so tasty) ‘food’.
I thought I would keep eating the SAD (Standard American Diet) until the end of 2018, but I just could not take it – physically or mentally. I did enough damage to myself in just over 3 months – now I need to find out how long it is going to take me to get back to fit …
By the way, if you are looking for a place to take a DEXA body composition scan, a great resource for you is DexaScan.com – which lists information and links for clinics and facilities which offer DEXA scans as part of their services. They offer many, many locations in the United States, some in Canada and the United Kingdom and more in Australia and New Zealand. I really wish I knew of this great DEXA directory site when I first started looking for local body composition testing facilities. DEXA is definitely the gold standard in body composition analysis and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in improving their health.