vituperation

“Okay, let’s get your height,” the receptionist said, leading me over to a column in the center of the room. On it, hash marks measured off inches and sections of inches all the way up to eight feet.

I was there to have my resting metabolic rate checked, because I’ve been wondering for the last couple of years what it is. This place, a support center for people having weight loss surgery (no, the irony isn’t lost on me) offers such a test for the modest fee of $50. With this visit I would find out if I was the fuel-burning machine I always thought I was.

“Five eleven,” she said, and wrote something on my chart. “Let’s get your weight.”

We walked over to the scale, which sat just outside an open office, and I stepped on it.

“YOU LOOK GREAT!” someone cried from within the office.

I looked up. Sitting behind a desk in the office was the nutritionist. Her face glowed with a million-watt smile.

“He hasn’t had the surgery,” the receptionist said.

“But thanks anyway,” I added, smiling. “If it’s any consolation, I used to be pretty fat.”

“You’re not going to believe how much he weighs,” the receptionist said. “Go ahead. Guess.”

The nutritionist made me stand in the doorway and turn this way and that, much like a head of cattle on display at the stockyard. She bit her lip and frowned, then guessed a number fully twenty-five pounds less than what their scale said.

“No!” the receptionist exclaimed, and gave her the number from the scale.

“I work out a lot,” I said in a small voice.

Shock and awe followed, along with the standard set of questions I have pat answers for by now.

The receptionist took me to the testing area.

“Put this in your mouth,” she said, and handed me a tube. “Make sure you have a good seal with your lips, and use this clip to pinch your nose shut. All the air you breathe has to go through the tube.”

I got rigged up and climbed onto the table with my Time magazine.

“The test will take 10 or 15 minutes. Every once in a long while one will take 20. The machine will beep real loud when it’s done and I’ll be back.”

She left me alone with my pinched nose, my magazine, and a whistling breathing tube.

Apparently, it had been a long while, because I was a 20-minute testee. By the time the machine went off I thought my nose was going to drop from my face it hurt so bad. The receptionist took me back to her desk to fill out some paperwork while she got the information off the machine for the nutritionist.

“How old are you?” she called.

“Thirty-eight this week.”

“Twenty-nine,” she said. I assumed she was joking, the old “twenty-nine again this year” one.

I finished the paperwork. The nutritionist came out to get me so we could go over my test results. The million-watt smile was back. We went into her office and she shut the door.

“You have a fast metabolism,” she said.

“I work out a lot.” This statement is sort of like a mantra for me.

“Your resting rate, the number of calories to keep you alive if you did nothing but sit in bed all day, is 2736 calories a day. Taking into account normal activities like getting dressed and walking around, and 30 minutes of moderate exercise, you need to eat THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY calories a day. That’s the one of the highest I’ve ever seen in someone who’s already lost weight.”

“Wow. I guess all that working out helped, huh?” I didn’t mention that I tend to hike, bike, or kayak four or five times a week on top of my normal workouts.

“I’ll say. Your metabolism is 28% higher than the average 29-year-old.”

“I’m not 29. I’m 38.”

“Oh my God, you’re 38? You don’t look anywhere close to 38!”

The woman certainly knows how to make an old man feel good about himself, that’s for sure.

“I’ll need to go reprint this,” she said, motioning at the chart, “because that’s going to change the numbers a little.”

Two minutes later she was back.

“Your metabolic numbers stayed the same, but your rate relative to your age went up. Your metabolism is 32% faster than the average 38-year-old’s.” She pointed to the marker of my rate on the “slow—normal—fast” line chart which, were it one tick further to the right, would be off that chart.

I pointed to the list of numbers at the bottom of the page.

“I know that fitness testing takes into account your VO₂ [volume of oxygen] rate,” I said. “Do you know what this number means about my fitness level?”

She shook her head. After Googling, it turns out that the VO₂ used for measuring your fitness level is your maximum rate. The rate you use oxygen just sitting there is not relevant.

“I don’t know how to tell,” she said. “But I know one thing I can check.”

She bent over and picked up a stack of printouts similar to mine and started flipping through them. She worked through the stack, then got a second one and went through it, comparing.

“I can’t tell you anything about those numbers,” she finally said. “But I can tell you this: your numbers are significantly higher than anyone else who’s taken the test, both before and after their weight loss.”

“I guess it’s the working out,” I said, singing my one-note (spelled L-I-T-E) song.

We chatted some more, laughed about how high my BMI is (I’m almost technically obese according to that number, which doesn’t take body composition into account, yet my 36-inch pants are loose around the waist) and I left, happy with the knowledge that I am, in fact, a calorie-burning motherfucker.

I saw my first snake of the season yesterday, a beautiful four-foot eastern kingsnake.

Sadly, even though I was originally going to take the camera with me, I ended up not taking it so I don’t have pictures.

I got to play with him for a couple of minutes before he slithered off. That was fucking cool.