It Pays to Be Nice!

I wanted to find out how much my gym charges to evaluate body fat percentage and approached the manager at the counter. (As far as managers go, she's pretty visible; rarely locking herself in her office, always greets clients as they walk in, etc.!) She pulled out a big binder, then stopped and looked around. "Can you keep a secret?" Me?? Of course I can!* "Follow me." And off we went to one of the trainers. "This lady," she said, pointing to me, "comes here a lot and she works really, really hard and she's very nice, and she wants to know her body fat percentage, so..." So, I got it done for free -- and he had time to do a fitness evaluation which I hadn't even asked for!

* Note on secrecy: I know, I know. I'm blabbing the "secret" all over the Internet! But nobody here knows where I go and it's more so that other people in the gym don't know or else there'd be a line up of people wanting theirs done for free as well!

Now for the bad news: body fat percentage = 38%! WHAT???? I really didn't think it was that much. He used the calipers and measuring tape and took all measurements twice. *sigh* Good news: I'm in pretty good shape overall, but my cardio was "acceptable" (I'd rather it be better than that) and some of my upper body strength could use some improvement. [Edited to add: I was just reading that you can get an inaccurate reading if you measure body fat percentage after exercise. I had just done 40 minutes of cardio... Am I grasping at straws or can it be that my body fat percentage is actually a bit lower??]

The other day I was reading Paige's article, Can I lose fat and gain muscle at the same time?, and I think I need to be focusing a bit more on losing fat -- although I definitely don't want to lose muscle, obviously. Seeing 38% pretty much confirms it for me though. I think if I was really weak, I'd focus on gaining muscle first. But since I do have some muscle, I'd like to get rid of some of this fat and at least maintain the muscle I have. I'm still doing weight training, of course, but I think I'll need to step up the cardio and re-evaluate my eating habits.

Any comment are welcome!