My Chronic Obesity Problem

It is impossible not to love my company’s annual health fair. They clear out the large training room, invite in anyone and everyone who could be said to have something to say on the topics of health and wellness, and either pay them to provide free tests and goodies, or demand them as a price of admission for the “free advertising.” Basically, you get to wander around booths, let people do things like measure your blood chemistry, give you chair massages, do chiropractic screenings, and inform you of the benefits of breathing the aromas of ancient eastern herbs. (Did I mention diversity of viewpoints earlier?) All of this is done while filling up goodie bags with tons of free stuff and informational pamphlets.

This year was my third such fair. I’m now a once-annual friend of the Aurora Health Services lady, who actually remembers me from my first time and waves me over, excited to poke me with a needle for my free blood test. I encourage my enemies to just assume that the cheerful nurse enjoys making me bleed. Anyone who likes that theory is invited to pretend that was the take home message of this entry and stop reading now, while you’re still smiling. Rejoin everyone below, after the second big gap. Have someone scroll for you if you’re worried about accidentally seeing controversial pro-Lake text.

…

…

…

Still with me? Ok. Actually, she looks forward to my blood test because she remembers back from April of 2005 that I was the only person on my production site with exactly in-spec blood chemistry, including cholesterol (all types), white blood cell count (low, but just barely in range, as is to be expected for me), blood sugar, triglycerides, etc. Everyone else failed something. Apparently passing a blood test is rare around these parts.

The second year (2006) I sat down with her, she looked at me funny, sort of squinted, and asked me, “Are you a vegan?” I was kind of shocked, since I didn’t think I’d ever seen the woman in my life. I said yes, and asked her how on Earth she knew that. Apparently I had told her as much during the chitchat as we waited for the machine to test my blood back in 2005, because I figured it would be pretty clear from the results. She had fed me some lines about the importance of making sure to have a balanced diet, and predicted some various imbalances in my blood ahead of the official results. As usual, I ignored this argument as biased (but true for most instinct-eater, moral vegans) and flushed it immediately out of my memory. My results came up perfect, she said that everything was great, and I went on my merry way. And then, every single other person on my site failed their tests. Apparently that struck her as, “Not what I was expecting.” So, completely unbeknownst to me, this woman spent a year researching the effects of a vegan diet on blood chemistry when her real work slowed down. And apparently this free-time research eventually caused her to completely rethink her previous spiel. And apparently she had spent a year waiting to see if she’d get the chance to see if I could ace the blood test again. So I hear about all this, laugh cheerfully, and say, “Well, let’s find out!” and I ace it a second time. I found out this year (2007) that she has taken to advocating a vegan diet to people whose blood tests come back looking… how to say… different than mine. If I’m not careful, PETA will see me sitting around some day in my leather shoes, coat and belt, try to buy me a drink as a way of saying thanks, then have me shot. On the other hand, that’s the response I get from most organizations (and individuals), so I suppose it’s nothing new.

Anyway, that story only shares the setting with what I had intended to write about. A few booths down from that, there was a nice, older lady who was calculating people’s BMI’s (Body Mass Indexes). This was a new development for the heath fair, and I had never heard of the measure. With some curiosity, I told the lady my height and weight, watched her do something with those two numbers and a chart, and listened with rapt fascination as she informed me I was overweight, pushing obese. This was very interesting to me. I briefly wondered if I had some sort of reverse eating disorder, in which my body image looked fine –- only to me -- regardless of how much I ate. The old lady gave me a sort of odd look, said something along the lines of, “But I wouldn’t worry about it,” and sent me on my way.

Twenty minutes later, I came to a different station, where a different lady (I think someone somewhere is discriminating against male nurses, female doctors, or both.) offered to measure my percent body fat with some electric doohickey that reminded me of an enormous PS2 controller. Apparently, it measures your body fat by sending an electric pulse through your hands, both arms, and chest. The theory is, if your pacemaker stops working and you collapse, you have a high percent body fat. If you have no pacemaker, nothing happens and you are fine.

…Ok, so maybe that’s not exactly how it works, because it gave me an answer in terms of a percent. My body fat, she claimed, was excellent – exactly where it should be. Somewhat disappointed, I pointed out that the lady a few tables down had promised me I was obese. I pointed to my paper scorecard (we get a sheet of paper that lets you record your various test results) as proof of my high score.

Much laughter ensued. The dream-crushing nurse informed me that the BMI basically assumes you have 0% muscle mass. So if you are short and normal weight, or if you are tall and are secretly a mostly-metal android… I mean… muscular, the measure tells you that you are overweight or obese. Grinding my hopes with her heel, she told me that her test was more accurate.

…

…

…

Ok, Lake detractors can pick up reading again at this point. Assume we’re still talking about the same nurse, but that it was discovered that she has multiple personalities and that each of them insisted on making me bleed separately.

Always the skeptic, I rejected the claims of that cruel PS2 nurse! In fact, I rejected the claims of the mean first nurse as well. Not only am I obese, but I hereby upgrade myself to “chronically obese” just to be patriotic. I’m pretty sure I accidentally told that first nurse that I was 75 feet tall. That’d lower the old BMI. Correcting for that error, I’ll bet my BMI is on the same order of magnitude as a lottery payout.

I plan to use my new handicapped status to demand the special parking spaces, movie theater seats, and an entire row of airline seats when I fly. It would just be unfair for me to bury neighbors under my rolls like I used to do.