Friday, June 03, 2005

Numbers, pictures, and other scary things

We did our nine week pictures on Sunday. I thought I would have some of them posted by now, but I don't yet. I will probably do that tonight. I did update my weight and body fat numbers on my page (go to http://www.geocities.com/tomncheryl/bfltprog.html and look at the very bottom of the page). I'm pretty happy with the trend, which continues to be positive and seems to indicate that last weeks numbers might have been an abberation. They showed me losing weight while my body fat percentage stayed the same, which would mean I'm losing lean mass (not a good thing). I said at the time that I thought the numbers were probably bogus. This week, they were back on track.

Okay, bear with me while I do some math. At the start, I was at 183.4 lbs with 22.7% body fat (both these numbers are from the Tanita body fat scale), which means I had 41.6 lbs of body fat and my lean weight was 141.8 lbs. After five weeks, I was at 178.8 lbs with a body fat percentage of 20.6%, so I had 36.8lbs of body fat and a lean weight of 142.0 lbs. As of Wednesday, my weight was 175.4 lbs and my body fat percentage was 18.8%. This means I had 33.0 lbs of body fat and a lean weight of 142.4 lbs. So, three quarters of the way through the challenge, I've lost a little less than nine pounds of body fat and my lean weight is up by not quite a pound.

These are not the staggering numbers that we're used to seeing from advertisements for various fad diets and such. There are two key points, though. First, I've lost fat without losing muscle, so everything I've accomplished is totally sustainable. In a lot of fad diets, you lose a lot of water and lean weight (muscle). When you go off the diet, the water comes back and the lost muscle is no longer there to burn calories and so your metabolism uses fewer calories and stores the excess as (drum roll please) FAT!!! The second thing is that I'm not just losing weight, I'm changing the way it's distributed. I'm thinner through the middle with a flatter stomach and more shoulder and arm muscle, and my legs, although always pretty solid (thanks to my Mom and Dad, who both have great legs) really look good now.

So, I said I wanted to lose seventeen pounds of fat and I'm probably going to be closer to twelve. But I'm very happy with everything that's happened so far. Whatever I fall short on this time will just be something to accomplish in the next challenge!

As for the pictures, there were some technical challenges, including not having the lights I wanted. So they didn't turn out as good as I expected, but we still got some good stuff, including the first pictures of this challenge that show both of us together! Cheryl did a few pictures in her new posing suit, some of which I will post if she will let me. We did a few of me in my posing suit (which I am NOT going to post, sorry). Hopefully, we learned enough about the process to get some good final pictures.

So, I really need to hit it these last three weeks. Since my body composition is changing, my metabolism should be up, which will help, but the main difference needs to come from me. For the next challenge, I want to change my focus to building muscle, so I'm going to be doing the nutrition slightly differently. But right now, I still have three weeks to close in on my goals.

Having said that, I need to go walk for awhile and burn some calories. The first and foremost thing is to keep moving!

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