Let's Play! Do You Have Metabolic Damage: The Quiz Part 1

Today we are going to do something fun! We are going to take a quiz!

Ha!

This quiz you can’t fail.  But you can’t really ace either.

Recently I created a new quiz that I’ve made available online called the Mini-Metabolic Quiz.

Because as a modern woman over 40, you may have found that losing weight and keeping it off has become incredibly frustrating.

No matter what you try, the weight will not come off – or stay off. No matter how

much you exercise or how little you eat, your weight never responds like you feel it should. Everyday you become a little more anxious about food, discouraged with how you look, and frustrated with your life.

Why does it feel like there is something deeply wrong with your metabolism? Like it’s just not working right?

Over the years, our metabolisms accumulate layers of damage from aging, past

diets, harmful eating habits, hormone changes, and even our genetics.

Most women don’t know that their stubborn excess body weight is due to

metabolic damage nor do they know that it can be fixed!

You don’t have to suffer forever with a damaged metabolism: it can be healed.

That’s why I created this Mini-Metabolic Quiz.

To see if your weight problem is the result of a damaged metabolism that just

needs to be repaired.

Because when you restore your metabolism, your weight, your health, your energy, your confidence, it all starts to fall into place.

To get started, CLICK HERE for a copy of the whole quiz in PDF form.

Click here for a BMI Calculator.

So we are going to go through the quiz in the next two sessions so I can break up the quiz and explain the relevance of each question.

Are you ready to get started?

Great! Let’s do it!

Question #1 is: What is your age?

Are you:

1. 40 or younger?
2. 50-56
3. 57 or older?

Why does age matter? Because metabolic damage happens in layers over time. And if you eat food in our modern food environment, you are most definitely layering on metabolic damage.

Plus, hormonal shifts that happen as we age like menopause play a large part in our metabolism. The ages are broken down into pre-menopause, menopause, and post menopause.

So your age can tell us a lot about how much damage your body has endured just by how many birthday candles you have on your cake.

Question #2: What is your BMI?

Here is a link for a BMI calculator. I’ll put it here in the comments.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html

Is it:

1. Less than 25
2. 25-30
3. Over 30

The poor BMI number has gotten a lot of bad press but it really does remain a very good indicator of health and being overweight.  It is actually a very good measure of your body mass and if you are at a healthy body mass or not.  Again, it’s not perfect, but it consistently holds the strongest correlation with health.  

If you are less than 25 you have a healthy weight for your height overall.  Between 25-30 you are considered overweight, and over 30 is considered obese. 

Now, if you are of Asian descent, you have a different BMI chart.  If your BMI is 23-26.9 you are considered overweight. And if your BMI is over 27 you are considered obese. 

Now, since 2016, we also use more data to help us diagnose if you have a weight problem.

And that leads us to question number three.

3. What is your waist circumference?

1. less than 30 inches?
2. 30-34 inches?
3. 35 inches or more?

When trying to figure out how metabolically fit you are we need more information than just your BMI, we need to know how the weight is situated on your body.  

If you hold weight in your hips and bottom, that is more metabolically healthy than when your midsection is carrying quite a bit of excess body fat.

So we want our waist to be under 35” as women.

If you measure your midsection, find the top of your hip bones and securely measure around that point, sometimes it’s at your belly button, sometimes not, but relax, don’t suck in, and make sure your tape is taut but not squeezing, and it is straight across the back. Measure that circumference in inches.

This helps us understand where your body is depositing its excess body fat. Metabolic syndrome, metabolic damage, insulin resistance is associated with midsections that are over 35 inches.

If you are of Asian descent, your cutoff is 31 inches. If you live in Europe, your cutoff is 31 inches.  In America and Canada, we follow the 35 inch mark.

So we use these three first questions to really set the stage on your basic anthropometric data.  

We don’t need the waist to height ratio. We will use the AACE/ACE guidelines and use your BMI + Waist circumference then add in your age.

The next three questions help us figure out what is happening with your health.  How much inflammation you may have.  We call these co-morbidity risks in the clinic, but these are health conditions that we commonly see together when someone is suffering from metabolic damage.

Question number four:

4. Do you have any of the following conditions: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or high blood sugar?

1. No, I have none of those health conditions.
2. Yes, I have one of those health conditions.
3. Yes, I have more than one of those health conditions.

Now, for these questions, you need to know a bit about your health in order to answer.  

Metabolic damage is real. It’s not just a hook I came up with. So we can use real medicine to help you figure it out.

High blood pressure is considered anything over 130/80 since 2017 from the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association.

High cholesterol can be interpreted a few ways. I used “high cholesterol” because it’s a catch all phrase that your doctor would use and you would be familiar with.

Your cholesterol is not just one thing. It’s a whole panel of things.  But for this level of assessment, we’ll just say, hey, if your cholesterol is off, check the box. When you speak directly with me, I ask you for specific labs and numbers to really assess your cholesterol.  And then high blood sugar is a fasting blood sugar that is 100 mg/dL in the US or 6.1 mmol/L in Canada.

Your doctor may say things like, “your sugars are getting a little high.”  Or, “we need to keep an eye on your blood sugar.”  

High blood pressure, wonky cholesterol and high blood sugars all point to metabolic dys-regulation. Which just means, your body is not healthy, it’s having trouble taking the food you eat and controlling the burning and storing of it.  

Healthy metabolisms have healthy blood pressure. 

Healthy metabolisms have healthy cholesterol numbers.

Healthy metabolisms have healthy blood sugar levels.

So if you have problems with your blood energy system, you have a metabolic problem.

And more than one, means the metabolic problem is more serious.

Question 5.

Were you diagnosed with gestational diabetes or high blood sugar while pregnant?

1. No, never pregnant.
2. No, normal pregnancies.
3. Yes, with one or more pregnancies.

Gestational diabetes is when you basically develop diabetes, or insulin resistance when you are pregnant. Which is like a crystal ball into how your body may react to chaining hormonal shifts after 40.  

It’s like a little warning light that you have the genetics and predisposition to metabolic damage. It seems like something that just happened a long time ago, but it’s really a big genetic marker. 

Question 6:

6. Do you have any of the following conditions: type 2 diabetes, arthritis, or heart disease?

1. No, I have none of those health conditions.
2. Yes, I have one of those health conditions.
3. Yes, I have more than one of those health conditions.

Along the lines of question 4 we are now scaling your health conditions and really looking at inflammation in your body. 

As we follow your health trajectory, is it getting worse?  Have you gone from high blood sugars into full type 2 diabetes?

Now, we’ll continue the next half of the quiz next week. But these first 6 questions are clinical questions to assess your metabolic health. 

So if you don’t know what your waist circumference is, your BMI, your health conditions, take a bit of time to figure those things out this week.

For the results, a’s are worth 1 point. B’s are worth 3 points and c’s are worth 5 points.

So the older we are, the higher our BMI, the wider our waists, the more abnormal the labs, the more difficult pregnancies, the more chronic health conditions we have, the more metabolic damage you are likely to have.

And this is a cycle. Metabolic damage causes your waist to be more than 35 inches and the wider your waist, the more metabolic damage you incur over time.  It’s a cycle of weight gain and declining health.

Also remember, some of these items, like our age, we can’t change.  It’s not about getting a zero score. It’s more about exploring all the facets of metabolic damage and trying to use multiple data points to help you assess your metabolic health.

So it’s really important to understand your health measures because you can break free of this cycle.

Alright, great job today everyone. Next week, we’ll go through the last 6 questions in more detail.

I’ve linked the whole quiz above this video, plus the BMI calculator link to help you.

If you would like to know more about repairing your damaged metabolism, click above to learn more.

You can lose weight and achieve glowing health, you just need to repair your metabolism first.