Weight: 218.0 (-13.2)
Fat: 34.4% (-4.9%)
Meals: Dinner, Fast 2 end 7pm
Exercise: Cardio (Treadmill 27:00 WL5 - 348 calories, 1.96 miles)
Pictures: Front/Side/Back/Flex
Today officially marks the end of month one and the beginning of month two. It's been a big, big month for me; first months usually are, with lots of changes. Tomorrow I'd detail the changes I made but for today we're going to focus on how my body has changed.
Statistics
I'll begin with a few statistics. I will eventually post my resistance training logs, but for now I'll say that I've done a total of 180 crunches. I've run a total of 57.43 miles, burning (if my treadmill can be believed) a total of 9368 calories (or 2.7 pounds of fat) in 15 hours, 35 minutes, which gives me an average speed of 3.69 miles per hour. I've lost a total of 13.2 pounds which means that all that running burned enough calories to account for a whopping 20% of my weight loss. That's right, running 57 miles in 15.5 hours resulted in just one fifth of my total weight loss.
Assuming that the entirety of my weight loss was a result of fat loss, which requires 3,500 calories per pound to burn off, I had a total calorie deficit of 46,200 calories, or 1490 calories daily over 31 days. If we subtract the 9368 calories for running, the remainder of 36,832 calories (or 1188 daily) was the result of eating less. Have you realized yet how futile it is to lose weight yet by ignoring diet and focusing entirely on working out?
Although I'm using lots of decimal places and calculating down to the exact calorie how much I burned on the treadmill I want to stress that these numbers are approximations and in many cases pure guesses. Some of that weight loss is probably changes in water retention. Exercise equipment notoriously overestimates how many calories you burn (which only emphasizes how important diet is over exercise). Not all weight loss will be fat, some of it may be lean body mass, no matter how hard you work in the gym to prevent it. Please don't mistake the precision of the numbers above for anything other than ballpark figures.
Pictures
Now that we've covered a few of the more interesting statistics, let's review the progress I've made visually. The first thing you see when you load up my blog is the giant photo with each entry that contains three angles of my plump physique, it's probably best to start there. If you hover over the picture with your mouse you can see my first pictures from day 3. Since I have an iPhone with no mouse, I may turn that into a mouse click toggle but I haven't done that as I write this.
Interestingly I don't see very much change in the front photo. My neck is a bit more defined, my cheeks are maybe a bit less full. My lower torso seems a bit thinner, but I'm not convinced that wasn't primarily the change in camera distance. Overall though, it's easy to see why I would get discouraged so much. Not only do I fail to notice the daily changes, but even over a month I see very little change from the front.
From the side though, you can see a huge difference. My gut which still seems omnipresent even now, has greatly reduced in sheer bulk. Instead of rounding out, you can actually see a bit of flattening. There's still a substantial overhang, and a lot of mass left in that bulk, but it's good to see a noticable dent in the overall size. I'd already noticed this change before so while it may be more dramatic now, it isn't quite as surprising as seeing the arch in my back. My shorts even ride higher in the back thanks to the change in my waist. I can see the difference in my arms as well which is odd to me as I never thought I carried much fat in my arms or legs.
The back shot is almost as dramatic as the side shot, although the gut reduction is probably more noticable at a glance. Looking at the original back shot I look positively inflated, even bloated. I had noticed the lines above my love handles becoming more distinct, but my shoulders... good lord, that first picture is like an unbroken arch. It's taken a while but my shoulders are finally starting to have a shape that can be described with sides instead of a single curve.
Measurements
After the pictures the first measurement that everyone reaches for is actual weight loss. How many fewer pounds on the scale? Compared to my first day, today I was 13.6 pounds lighter than when I started out.31 days ago. This is a 5.9% reduction in body weight and averages out to 3.1 pounds per week. When I started my program I had been thinking that just a single pound per week was a healthy target since I wasn't planning to diet or accelerate my weight loss. My plan was and is to create sustainable changes in my lifestyle which leads to this weight loss. So three pounds per week is a phenomenal start. When I get closer to my target weight it will slow down, but for now, I'm extremely happy.
My fat percentage has dropped from 39.3% to 34.4% or a drop of 4.9%. Although I have serious reservations about the accuracy of this measurement, losing 4.9% body fat compares pretty well to my 5.9% reduction in body weight. It's definitely possible I've lost some lean body mass, especially since my resistance training didn't begin until the middle of the month. I can worry about bulking up and adding muscle later. For now, as long as most of the loss is fat I'm very pleased.
Having gone over my tape measurements just the other day at the end of week 4, I won't go over those again. I will repeat that I am quite pleased with an inch and a half reduction thus far in my waist, and point out that I actually had to buckle my belt a loop tighter the other day.
Conclusion
At the end of month one, I'm very pleased with my progress. Everyone is anxious to see change and because of my anal retentive, obsessive compulsive thorough documentation, I'm able to see multiple angles on the progress I've made. On one hand I don't recommend that everyone record as much detail as I have, but definitely taking measurements, photos, etc at various 'checkpoints' can definitely help with long-term motivation.
Tomorrow, I'm going to give an overview of the plan I've used thus far to achieve these results. I'd hoped to include those in today's post but if I don't push that until tomorrow this post would probably be three times the normal size. So tune in same fat time, same fat URL for more adventures in weight loss.
