Thanks Garmin for telling me my fitness age is 63. When you dig into they’re using to make this judgement, it really just means I’m overweight. My actual age is 61 but I’m a chubby 61, which for Garmin means 63. Fine.
Nicole has blogged about this here. And me too a couple of years ago when they said, right after knee surgery and I wasn’t moving much, that I was 74 in fitness years.
I’ve found this whole “fitness age” puzzling ever since Nicole blogged about it way back when.
Garmin describes it this way, “Fitness age is an estimate of how fit you are compared to your actual age. Consider the fitness age value a helpful reminder that healthy choices and regular physical activity can help you feel fresh and revitalized. And remember, if your fitness age is older than your actual age, even small steps in the right direction can have a substantial impact on how you feel.”
Garmin’s fitness age takes into account activity intensity, resting heart rate and body fat percentage or body mass index (BMI).
I don’t find it particularly motivational. Do you?
Those “calculations ” are just silly and annoying. They lump all of us into a group & apply a bunch of reasonable factors to get their answers, but they miss (probably a lot more) individual factors.
I am speaking with the perspective of one whose measured factors are very good. I am very active, have a low resting heart rate, am thin, blah, blah blah. But of course the system knew nothing of my history of brain cancer.
It happens that my low grade tumor inspired me to get in shape: I was told I had 10-15 years left, so figured I should get stuff done now, not at some future date. (Turned out differently: I am now 27 years out with no further treatment or recurrence).
OK, I accept this is an absurdly improbable set of factors. But it’s also a pretty good way to show how easily such a one-size-fits-all calculation can miss the elephant in the room.
I stopped looking at those sorts of supposed medical measurements years ago.