MikeIsLosingIt.com

After about eight weeks stuck in the 270s, I’m finally out of them. I weighed in today at 268.8, which is 1.2 lbs for the week and 52.8 total. As I mentioned in my last Wednesday Weigh-in, several of those weeks I was stuck between 270.8 and 272.8, including last week. After last week’s weigh-in at 270.0 I immediately went back up to 272.8 the next day and fluctuated back and forth all week. Finally, after getting discouraged about it Sunday afternoon, I decided to get fanatical and blow through the wall that I seemed to be up against. I talked to Tim about it on Monday and then worked out really hard…really hard. Then I did cardio yesterday and worked out hard again today. I also went super strict on my diet as well. The result? I lost a couple of pounds in the last couple of days, skipping right over 269. My goal is to get the heck out of the 260s…FAST. I want to see 250-something within the next couple of weeks. I plan on working out five days a week for the next several weeks and staying strict on the diet during that time, too. I don’t know exactly what was up with the plateau I hit, but I’m past it now.

UPDATE: Since posting this article several weeks ago I discovered that my Bod Pod analysis was incorrect…it was so far outside the margin of error that you could easily call it ridiculous. For an update on the Bod Pod and my experience with hydrostatic weighing, see my post: Bod Pod: Worthless in the Hands of a Boob.

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The Bod Pod is a large egg-like pod that is used to measure body composition. After being analysed about a month ago in one of them, I now know what it would feel like to be some kind of giant bionic chicken, or maybe one of the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey before HAL 9000 kills them…or better yet, fat Jonathan Winters in Mork and Mindy.

When my Tanita scale at home isn’t telling me “Error Error Error,” it’s giving me readings that fluctuate wildly from 40-46% body fat. That’s a huge difference, and it gives me similarly conflicting readings for lean body mass. Consequently I’ve gotten tired of not really knowing for sure where I stand in my fitness program, so I decided to get a professional, non-bio-impedance test to give me a reasonably accurate estimate of my body fat percentage and lean body mass. That would give me a good benchmark from which to set reasonable goals and track my results.

I did a lot of research and found that the most accurate tests are hydrostatic weighing (underwater weighing), DEXA (a test using x-ray technology), and the Bod Pod (air displacement plethysmography). The Bod Pod is similar to underwater weighing except that it measures the volume of air you displace rather than water, making it MUCH more convenient and just as accurate. I could only find one place in Fort Worth that has one, the City Club of Fort Worth. Fortunately you don’t have to be a member to use it, but you do have to pay $50. There is a cheaper place about 45 miles away in north Dallas, but the City Club is about 10 minutes from us, so the choice was a no-brainer.

The process is very quick and simple. You have to wear something tight like compression shorts and a swim cap, because your hair and loose clothes can trap air and throw off the readings. They weigh you, you sit in the pressurized pod for about a minute (you don’t feel any pressure changes), and you’re done. Couldn’t be easier. I plan on doing it once every few months or so to track my results. My research says that the Bod Pod has only a 1-2% margin of error, similar to the other “gold standard” tests. Here are the numbers from my test:

Body Mass: 272.189 lb
Fat Mass: 122.249 lb
Fat Free Mass: 149.939 lb
% Fat: 44.9%
% Fat Free Mass: 55.1%

So after about five months of training with three months of dieting I’m down about 50 lbs, with a body fat percentage of 44.9%. I wish I knew exactly where I was when I started, because I KNOW I’ve gained muscle/lean body mass, which means I’ve actually lost more than 50 lbs. But, just so that I’d have a reasonable idea, I ran the numbers to calculate what my minimum body fat percentage was when I started by assuming I haven’t gained any muscle at all. I know I’ve gained some (probably quite a bit), but at least this gives me a minimum starting point. At 321.6 lbs, with 149.9 lbs of lean body mass, that puts me at a minimum of 53.4% fat when I started. If I’ve gained say 10 lbs of muscle (which is probably still a conservative guess), then that would put me at 56.5% fat at the beginning.

All of that means that I’ve lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 9-12% body fat since I started. Pretty cool. Yes, I’m still at 44.9% fat, which is hugely obese, but I’ve come a long way and am very encouraged. My hope for the next time I’m tested is to have gained several pounds of muscle while losing 20-30 more pounds of fat. I’ll probably go again sometime shortly after breaking the 250 barrier.

Below is a scan of the test results with several more stats listed, such as my Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). Click the image to see a larger version.

It’s been a month since my last official “Wednesday Weigh-in,” although I have weighed myself lots of times since then. In that month I have lost exactly 0.8 pounds. Ugh! For roughly two weeks I didn’t lose anything. My weight would yo yo between about 270.8 and 272.8, in spite of the fact that I was still working out and dieting…and then came the Disney-eat-like-a-christmas-ham-getting-ready-for-the-slaughter Trip. Two weeks of that and then another week of trying to get back to my normal routine put me up around 275 again. But as of this morning I’m at 270.0 (51.6 lbs total). So, I had a month of patience testing, but now I’m on my way back down. The Disney trip, though, was totally worth the small setback. 🙂

Onward and upward!…or I guess “downward” in my case.

If you want to lose weight and keep it off, stop living like a fat person on a diet and start living like a fit athletic person in training. Change your lifestyle.

116,492 steps, or 46 miles. That’s how much we walked during our 10 day vacation to Disney World. I bought a good pedometer right before our trip because I was curious about how much we would walk, and I’m glad I did. The least we walked was 1.3 miles on the last day, since it was pretty much hotel, airport, and home. The most we walked was 8.4 miles on the second day there, which was also the day I decided to workout at the hotel’s fitness center during Nadia’s afternoon nap. I did about half-an-hour on the elliptical and then 20 minutes of legs (leg press, leg curls, etc.). It was kind of crazy now that I look back on it, but I don’t regret it. By the end of the vacation, however, I wasn’t doing any workouts…my legs and feet hurt enough without it. Walking all day in the sun in the mid-90s heat was quite enough for me.

I ate like a pig the whole time, but didn’t really gain much weight…possibly a pound or two (if any). All that walking and sweating made it practically impossible to gain weight. I got back to my regular workout routine Wednesday, the day after we got back, and I’ll be getting back to my diet this week. It was a fun trip, but I’m glad things will be back to “normal” this week.

If you want to read all about the trip, and see pictures and videos from it, visit our family blog at: www.dwimble.com. Louanne will be posting about it over the next several days.