What's your resting heart rate?

[Catrin]

My resting heart rate ranges from the high 50's to 62, it has improved greatly over the last 2.5 years!

[marni]

last time I was at the dr. the nurse reached over and peeled back my eyelid to see if I was still alive. Apparently she was alarmed that it was only 45. She took it three times with the same result. Unfortunately, my bmi defines me as overweight although I have shrunk from a womans 22 xl to a petite 8-10 . It all depends on how it is measured, by the pincer method or by straight tape measure measurements. By the pincer method I am at 19 %, by the measurement I am 24% and overweight. I tend to go more by how I feel and how my clothes fit.

It's all so much incantations and chicken fat. I will die when I am fated to die, overweight or underweight, aerobically fit or no.

marni

[Anelia]

My doctor also checks my heart very thoroughly because my reasting heart rate is 35-37. She says my heart is like a turtle's. If you don't believe me... (I'm sorry for the big picture). My HR monitor is correct, I double check it with the finger on the wrist, too.
I'm 33 and my BMI is 18,7 but I don't believe in BMI, it's the muscle/fat ratio that matters. And of course aerobic fitness and gneteics. I have difficulties raising my HR, the hard zone for me is over 160-165.

[gnat23]

I always had this vision of people with resting heart rates in the 30's, I mean, that's a beat every two seconds, right? It's slow, but I just imagine it's like a cannon going off every time. (ba-BOOM! .. ba-BOOM! .. )

-- gnat! (she of hummingbird heart)

[malkin]

I think they use BMI because the data are all available for a large population sample.

Is your insurance set up so your premium changes with your BMI?

[Anelia]

The ONLY thing that matters when paying my health insurance is the salary I get. For example if an obese 57-year-old person with two heart attacks, heavy drinker and chain smoker receives half the money a 23-year-old elite athlete receives, the unhealthy person will pay half the insurance. I know we live in a crazy country and we have to be a little nuts to survive.

[zoom-zoom]

Even though I am clinically overweight (by maybe 10#s, not a lot) my BP is generally in the 110/60 ballpark. Cholesterol is amazing--my HDL/LDL ratio is about 1:1, triglycerides <40 (I recall they were about 35, last time I was checked). I can't recall my heart rate. At the doctor it's usually 60ish. I'm sure it would be much lower if I checked first thing in the AM while still in bed.

My PCP is awesome. He has never once said anything to the effect that I should lose weight. He knows I'm very active and my non-weight #s paint a more accurate picture of my health than does the BMI. The BMI is just a screening tool, not a diagnostic one.