The eye of the beholder

It's funny how your perceptions can change. Several times today, I've seen myself in the mirror, or glanced down at my stomach while sitting at my desk, or otherwise got a glimpse of myself and thought, "Geez, I still have so much abdominal fat to lose." In those moments, I feel a little discouraged. I know that the gains I've made so far are significant, maybe even remarkable, but I sometimes feel like there's just no way I'm going to get to where I want to be in the less-than-seven-weeks that I have left in the challenge. I set loss of abdominal fat and/or washboard abs as my primary goal in this challenge. Well, I've gained abdominal muscle, but it won't show until I lose the layer of fat that I have there. So, it's hard to be this far away from achieving that as I approach the halfway point.

On the other hand, I've had the opposite experience as well today. I've caught my reflection in the elevator doors or glanced down at my stomach while on the phone and thought, "Wow, I really have slimmed down." And I have. There are any number of objective measurements that prove that I'm thinner than I was five weeks ago and there's ample evidence that I have a healthier body fat ratio than I've had in over five years. Reversing five years of weight gain and lost fitness in a little over five weeks; I can't help but feel pretty good about that.

The truth is, if I finish these twelve weeks and I don't have a washboard stomach and narrow waist, it's not the end of the world. I have NEVER had those things. I'm not saying I'm giving up. I hope I'm going to make it and I plan to do whatever I can to make that happen. But if I get even close, it will be a huge achievement for me. And if I'm close, I'll be poised to achieve it in the next challenge.

I did measurements tonight. According to the scale, I'm down not quite five pounds from my starting weight. Also, all three body fat measurements were lower than in any of the previous four weeks. As usual, the one-site caliper test gave me the lowest measurement (17.8%), while the four-site caliper test gave the highest (24.6%) with the Tanita body fat scale splitting the difference at 20.6%.

Now, my original goal was to lose 15 to 17 pounds of body fat. I've lost less than 5 pounds of scale weight in just under six weeks. However, I want to run some numbers real quick. So work with me here and please excuse the math. I'll use the Tanita figures since they are the middle ones. In the beginning, I was at 183.4 pounds with 22.7% body fat. This means that 41.6 pounds of my body weight was fat (and that my lean weight was 141.8 pounds). In this last set of measurements, I was at 178.8 pounds with 20.6% body fat. So 36.8 pounds of my body weight is fat which is a 5 pound decrease in body fat and my lean weight is actually up slightly to 142.0 pounds. In reality, there are many factors that influence these numbers, both for better and for worse, but the trend indicates that I am losing body fat while maintaining and even increasing lean weight (i.e. muscle).

Now I really shouldn't do this, but suppose I make my goal and lose 17 pounds of body fat. That would mean that, starting from 183.4 pounds, assuming my lean weight doesn't increase, I would be at 166.4 lbs. Subtract the lean weight of 142.0 pounds and you have 24.4 pounds of body fat which would make my body fat percentage 14.6%.

Once again, numbers and trends are almost meaningless at this stage in the challenge, but the trend is that my goals appear to be attainable. Would a body fat percentage of less than 15% be good enough to reach my appearance goals. From the pictures I've seen of men in that body fat range, yes, I think I would be very close to what I want to achieve.

Time will tell, but I feel good about where I'm at right now.

While I was posting my current numbers to my progress page on the web site (http://www.geocities.com/tomncheryl/bfltprog.html), I added a few pictures to Cheryl's goals page (http://www.geocities.com/tomncheryl/bflcgoal.html). Scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see a really cool sunset picture. The silhouette is Cheryl!