I recently had the pleasure of attending a Bupa health assessment. January doesn’t exactly reflect my best health and it’s taken more time than usual to fit back into our routine. Because of this, I was expecting a few home truths!

I visited the Bupa health centre in the Spire Washington Hospital a few weeks ago. When I arrived I was greeted with smiles and clear instructions. I wish I didn’t just go to the toilet as my first job was to provide a urine sample! I managed, just.

The Figures Don’t Lie

The ‘Health Enhance’ assessment was to be split into two parts. The first was with Nurse Linda, or ‘Lovely Linda’ as I would go on to call her. She would record various things such as my height, weight, waist measurement, bloods, perform some light exercises, blood pressure and body fat percentage. I would then be passed onto Dr Maddox for the second part of the assessment.

I was playing a little game with myself as we took the measurements. I like to think I know deep down what my results are, whether I’m in tip top shape or whether there is room for improvement, like just after the Christmas break.

I started off really well as I got my height wrong, hahahaha! I always thought I was 5 foot nine inches tall but I’m actually 5 foot eight inches. Brilliant! If I was getting my height wrong, god only knows what my other results I would be. I’ll talk about these in the next section.

Out Of My Control

Everything went swimmingly well until we came to take blood. This is just something that’s out of my control unfortunately. I really don’t know why or what has caused this but the sight of needles, blood or even the hospital environment causes me to lie on the floor. I haven’t had a bad experience or anything like that but I can literally walk into a hospital and nearly faint. I have a few other fears such as spiders and flying – although I feel I’ve nearly conquered these. I’m not a controlling person but I just don’t like the feeling of not being in control of my own feelings.

Is it a coincidence that my Dad doesn’t like needles, flying or spiders? I believe this has been passed down to me so I’m doing my best to not pass this on to my own kids. Silly I know but I like to think of myself as a Superdad – someone who is here to protect and make my family feel safe. It’s important to have emotions though and showing a weakness about something isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Since Adam was born, I’m a much more emotional person. I’ll fill up at the occasional TV documentary or when my kids are on stage at a school play. I even filled up at a school report – that was borderline embarrassing, haha!

Back to the tests and we managed to extract some blood from the finger prick tests. Lovely Linda was great and she appreciated the fact I was clearly uncomfortable with the whole thing!

I was hooked up to various machines, which recorded my body fat percentage, blood pressure and heart rate. After this we performed some light stretches and exercises. Linda commented on how good my press-ups were. I should hope so being a personal trainer, haha!

My Report

Linda went through my results before I saw Dr Maddox. My weight wasn’t too bad actually. I guessed it pretty much spot on at 12 stone 2 pounds. My fighting weight is 12 stone dead, sometimes a little bit under.

This figure combined with my height created my Body Mass Index (BMI). The BMI is a well-established measure to determine if your weight is healthy for your height. Although mine crept slightly into the overweight bracket, Lovely Linda said it was because of my muscle mass (thanks to David Lloyd Clubs) so not to worry about this. I asked her to repeat ‘muscle mass’ again to me, haha! If this wasn’t the case though, having a high BMI can sometimes lead to ill-health.

Body fat percentage shows the proportion of fat and lean tissue in your body. If the balance of fat to lean tissue is too high, this can increase your risk of certain types of health problems like diabetes and heart disease. I thought my body fat percentage would be slightly higher and it came in at a respectful 16.7%. I’d like to shave a little bit off this throughout 2018.

The way body fat is distributed is quite important. People who have body fat stored mainly around their tummy are known as ‘apple-shaped’. They have a higher risk of developing heart disease and diabetes than people with the same amount of fat stored mainly around the hips and thighs (‘pear-shaped’). I came in at 43.9, which put me in the ‘Desirable’ bracket.

My activity levels are high. I train 3-4 times a week for around 20-40 minutes per session. This includes weight training, squash, running and boxing.

Your Estimated Average Energy Requirement (EAR) is the number of calories your body requires each day at your current activity level to maintain good health while maintaining your current weight. My score was 2759 calories per day if active and 1970 calories per day if inactive.

My blood pressure figure was 133 mmHg. This was an average of three tests and although it’s higher than normal, my results gradually got lower so we think it was because I was a bit stressed about the bloods. My palms were sweaty!

The next couple of tests were quite interesting. They took my results and checked them against 100 people of the same age, sex and ethnicity. My cardiovascular disease risk was 0.8%. This gives me a 0.8% risk of having a heart attack or stroke within the next 10 years.

This gave me a 1% risk of having diabetes within the next 10 years. This risk is slightly higher (0.9%) than a healthy person of the same age, sex and ethnicity. It’s not a massive issue and I’m still in the normal range but it’s something to consider moving forward.

Summary

My results were discussed with Dr Maddox at the clinic and we laughed about the whole blood thing, haha! The second part of the assessment would involve me standing in my pants. I was a little nervous but Dr Maddox soon put me at ease. This relaxed me a little bit. I had my eyes, hearing, throat and nose checked. Everything was thankfully fine.

We talked about my health, both mentally and physically. She had noticed my eczema and offered some advice. I’ve also had a recent battle with folliculitis on my thighs and a dry scalp. When the winter months hit, I seem to really suffer with my skin! Again, Dr Maddox offered some advice and I’ve noticed a huge improvement since. She said to continue keeping a close eye on my alcohol units and to continue living a healthy lifestyle.

One thing I’ve learnt over the years is that people focus too much on BMI, where this should be used as a sensible guide. The thing is, a light frame doesn’t necessarily mean healthy. What I liked about the Bupa graphs above is that you’ll notice words like ‘Underweight’ and ‘Undesirable’ near the bottom of the graph. They’ve coloured the brackets too so they go from a healthy green, to orange and red and in both directions. I personally find women much more attractive with junk in their trunk. Strong is the new skinny! I’ll save this for another post though.

Despite being a little nervous about the assessment since the 7^th of December 2017, I found it really helpful. Everyone should know the truth of where their health currently is and more importantly, where it’s headed.

Thanks for reading,

*Disclosure: This post was kindly sponsored by Bupa health centres. As ever, all opinions are my own.