congratulations, you're alarmingly overweight

MamaFantastic · March 2014

my husband's company offers a health incentive to its employees every year which involves taking an online screening tool and then getting a basic panel of bloodwork (cholesterol, glucose) and a simple physical evaluation. the end goal is helping employees and their spouses identify any potential health red flags. the silver lining is each person gets a monetary bonus if s/he completes the screening by a certain date. we always do it... hey, it's free money!

so this year i had been dragging my feet about getting it done since you're supposed to be fasting (yeah right!) and i have to drive to a sort-of-far-away lab to get it done. i finally made it happen on monday, and just got my results today. they are FULL of red flags!!

my favorite?? my waist circumference is alarmingly high, which puts me at risk for blah blah blah. yup.... breaking news! if only i knew how to fix this health problem....

katieharpiceland · March 2014

LOL. You'll figure it out how to fix it in a few weeks I bet :-)

Alana1977 · March 2014

Seriously!? This test does not factor in the fact that you are nine months pregnant? That is funny

ambarnett1 · March 2014

Man that cupcake must have grew into a baby... I knew I shouldn't have eaten so many.

MamaFantastic · March 2014

nope, no accounting for pregnancy. so weird. i guess they assume their employees don't have babies! there was one single question in the screening tool that asked if i was currently pregnant, but it didn't ask for my weeks gestation. the test results were also reported using fasting reference ranges (i had literally JUST eaten lunch when i walked into that lab), so my cholesterol panel was wayyyy out of whack too (though i can't seem to find a good non-fasting chol reference range online..... can anyone help me out?)

macof3 · March 2014

As long as you still get the monetary incentive who cares what it says

The insurance company and your org can't hold the results against you.

My office started doing the the online assessments this year that would give us a discounted insurance rate. I just went through and picked random numbers for all my measurements and BP, lol

homediva · March 2014

LOL!!

ksulli · March 2014

That's awful that they can't factor in a pregnancy. But I think we all have alarming waist circumstances at this point.

buffyjsa · March 2014

ebie79 said:

I can only imagine what my Wii Fit would make my avatar look like at this point.

This exactly. I have been avoiding out Wii Fit for just that reason. I really don't want it yelling at me for exercising and still gaining weight, or telling me "that's obese". Cause I'm going to tell it to bite me!

maelic · March 2014

Well, that's reassuring. Clearly they are competent and medically knowledgeable!

MamaFantastic · March 2014

eme520 said:
I have a chart for reference ranges for normal lab values during pregnancy. I had a similar screening and panicked at first. I'll link it later today!

Merci, Dr. Eme!

Avion22 · March 2014

mamrotu73 said:

I've been helping administer the weigh ins before our squadron's physical fitness test this week. If you weigh over a certain amount for your height, we tape measure you to make sure it is muscle not fat. I'm exempt, but measured myself for funsies... The chart said I was morbidly obese because of my waist circumference.

Yeah, I did a DOD health system survey last week and it asked for my age, height, and weight...yeah, I'm totally obese! Of course there was nowhere to click, "But hey, I'm 9 months pregnant, so when I say I'm in "excellent health" with this high of a BMI, I'm not blowing smoke up you're butt....

MrsZ0811 · March 2014

I had to do my screening this fall for my husbands company as well. They just omitted a few of the values - mainly the waist circumference - because I'm pregnant. and i was only 12 weeks then. I am glad they did though, because our monetary "reward" is based on how healthy you are. So the better the numbers the bigger the reward.

DaisyJanie · March 2014

We have similar health screenings at work, they're cheap but sadly there's no financial incentive for them. I skipped the last one because I'm pregnant and I don't want to hear how "overweight" I am. Good to know I didn't just make up that fear.

Also reminds me of when we got our Wii Fit, I was pregnant so when it created my profile it told me I was overweight and needed to lose 10-20 lbs. Then I logged in 6 mos later and after pointing out that I hadn't logged in in awhile, it congratulated me on my great weight loss. Thanks, Wii Fit! I worked hard for it.

ETA: Ha, just noticed somebody else mentioned the Wii Fit. I remember looking up to see if there was some way of telling it you were pregnant, and the only suggestion was telling it you were wearing 20 lbs of clothing.

MamaFantastic · March 2014

MrsZ0811 said:

our monetary "reward" is based on how healthy you are. So the better the numbers the bigger the reward.

that's one way to encourage healthy living! holy moly. i don't know how i feel about that.

J&NL · March 2014

Well at least you know it's not entirely accurate this time.

Lauraa00 · March 2014

MamaFantastic said:

MrsZ0811 said:

our monetary "reward" is based on how healthy you are. So the better the numbers the bigger the reward.

that's one way to encourage healthy living! holy moly. i don't know how i feel about that.

Seriously creepy! I can get having healthy bp and cholesterol levels but would you get increasing funds depending on how much you weighed or your waist circumference? Seems like that's a recipe for disaster. Hopefully there are ranges and not "ideal" weights that don't take individual differences into account.

pbandjmom · March 2014

I did an online version of this for my husbands work - we get a monetary incentive too. I was asked first about pregnancy. Answer: yes. Then later about how many alcoholic beverages I have a week. Answer: a few, becuase I was thinking they wanted to know my typical non-pregnant answer.

I was totally berated in the results package. Like, you're pregnant!!! You can't be drinking!!!

I fell for it, now they think I'm a terrible mother.

ksulli · March 2014

My parents went on a baby on that included a little puddle jumper plane to get to the island- so little that they want everybody's weight to assign seating. My mom yelled at the guy, "I don't have to tell you that- I'm pregnant!!!"

MamaFantastic · March 2014

all i got was "403 Forbidden"

sorry, eme... doesn't work for me

MissWhis · March 2014

Yeah, those things are pointless to have done during pregnancy. My company wanted me to have one done by June and I skipped it. I'm missing out on a $50 incentive, but I didn't want "faulty" values in my record.

Your lipid panel results (triglycerides, cholesterol) were out of whack because most pregnant women have hyperlipemia of pregnancy. It's totally normal. It's not recommended to do that testing until at least 3 months postpartum.

I'm a medical laboratory scientist so see this stuff pretty frequently. The scary part is when primary care physicians interpret the results incorrectly because they don't realize some tests are so affected by pregnancy. It's normal for pregnant women to have high lipids, high white cell count, and high ALP. A1C values are usually low due to increased blood volume (which equals dilution of red blood cells).

If you have questions about the results, I would take them to your OB.

MrsZ0811 · March 2014

Lauraa00 said:

MrsZ0811 said:

our monetary "reward" is based on how healthy you are. So the better the numbers the bigger the reward.

that's one way to encourage healthy living! holy moly. i don't know how i feel about that.
Seriously creepy! I can get having healthy bp and cholesterol levels but would you get increasing funds depending on how much you weighed or your waist circumference? Seems like that's a recipe for disaster. Hopefully there are ranges and not "ideal" weights that don't take individual differences into account.

Its like percentages - you get points for being in the goal range and the closer to the goal range you are the more point you get. SO like if you get 80+ points you get a 20% discount on your health insurance for the year. If you get 70-79 points you get a 15% discount and is you get 60-69 points you get a 10% discount. So being in the ideal weight range you get 5 points. Your blood pressure being in the ideal range is again 5 points. and so on. But you get less point for it being too low. Like my DH is always underweight (not for a lack of trying I must say, he eats like a horse!) so he never gets the full 5 points for his weight being in the ideal range. This year my cholesterol was lower than the "ideal" range and so I only got 3 points instead of 5. Its a pretty good system in my opinion. Working in healthcare I have seen some pretty crazy incentives but this one seems to be a pretty healthy one!

MamaFantastic · March 2014

MissWhis said:

Yeah, those things are pointless to have done during pregnancy. My company wanted me to have one done by June and I skipped it. I'm missing out on a $50 incentive, but I didn't want "faulty" values in my record. Your lipid panel results (triglycerides, cholesterol) were out of whack because most pregnant women have hyperlipemia of pregnancy. It's totally normal. It's not recommended to do that testing until at least 3 months postpartum. I'm a medical laboratory scientist so see this stuff pretty frequently. The scary part is when primary care physicians interpret the results incorrectly because they don't realize some tests are so affected by pregnancy. It's normal for pregnant women to have high lipids, high white cell count, and high ALP. A1C values are usually low due to increased blood volume (which equals dilution of red blood cells). If you have questions about the results, I would take them to your OB.

see, my incentive was $250, so i WAS willing to drag my pregnant rear end down there for that bonus! my total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL were sky high (though HDL was perfect) and i assumed that must have been related either to pregnancy, my non-fasting state, or perhaps both. last year's results were perfect - i think my total cholesterol was something like 150. this year it was almost 270!

sweetpeace13 · March 2014

My husbands company has that too. However pregnancy exempts me.

BiggerinRealLife · March 2014

Justsoyaknow I heard about this great crash diet. It takes a few weeks to work, and you have to pass a lot of stuff out of your system before it's effective, but you lose, like, 10 pounds in a day.

MissWhis · March 2014

I would have done it for $250, too! If I were you I'd just go in and have a lipid panel done again at 4 or 5 months after the baby is here. I would bet you'll see your numbers back down where they should be.

@sweetpeace13 - now THAT's how it should be. You should definitely get an exemption if you are pregnant. It doesn't make any sense for these screenings to be one-size-fits-all.

ricekez · March 2014

I had to do one of these at 8 months pregnant with DS. I got the same result - too girthy! No adjustment to the ranges for pregnancy.

But in my case, it's worth $1500, so I do it. This year, I was only in my 1st trimester, so my numbers were normal.

Emily041285 · March 2014

My company's program is point based and you have to do all these programs during the year to meet the points. Thing is they don't tell you the discount until after the program is over. I got a sad $10 a month discount for a whole lot of work. Not doing it this year.

Twirple · March 2014

My company does it too, for discounts on insurance. It was totally worth it for me. I had mine done in September, before I lost Baby A. They weren't supposed to weigh me, since I'm pregnant, but they did anyway. When I specified that I was carrying twins, they wrote "PREGNANT" all over the form in big bold letters, since they had already filled in my weight.

The rest of my numbers were good.

LolaX2 · March 2014

Ha my company does the same thing ad I got the same results. Also that my BP was high at 125/78?Really? And my weight was too high for my height. I send a pissy email to the company as they did actually ask if you are pregnant or breastfeeding but did not take that into account at all. Seriously WTF why even ask if you aren't going to take it into account.

Pandamom416 · March 2014

I had my midwives write all over my health screening that I was pregnant and the results could not be reported since they wouldn't make sense. I got the full amount they give to you for doing it.

MamaFantastic · March 2014

perfect, thank you!! my panel is perfectly normal (on the lower end, even) for third trimester ranges. this was very helpful. my husband, who had been teasing me all day about my "risky levels" has been sufficiently quieted

csmily51 · March 2014

ebie79 said:

I can only imagine what my Wii Fit would make my avatar look like at this point.

My favorite is the "oh" that the Wii makes when you step on it, I always feel like such a fat ass lol.

congratulations, you're alarmingly overweight

Re: congratulations, you're alarmingly overweight

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