Goals updating

January 29th 2007 at 3:42 pm

So one of my goals this year was not just to get that novel done and donate money to charity if I missed my wordcount, but to also better my fitness levels:

I’m exactly 230 pounds, and 22% bodyfat, putting me at just above dead average for an American male, though thanks to working out with weights, I have 179 pounds of lean muscle and 51 pounds of fat. The lean muscle mass is somewhat above average. I want to reduce my bodyfat to 17% by April 30th (judging by my past records, that would probably put me at 165 lean muscle and 40 pounds fat for a nice 205 lbs). I’m not sure if I’ll make it, but what I want is for every 1% up to that 5% I lose for you to donate a book I choose for everyone to release into the wild with Bookcrossing. They’ll be under $7 each, so the max you might have to spend is $35.

If I get to release 100 books over the entire process, I’ll show the before and after pictures!

That was written January 2nd. It’s the end of the month. I did a series of checks this morning to plug them into my excel calendar. I haven’t been uber-strict about working out or keeping my food healthy, but I’ve been focusing on small battles (more water, more protein, less simple carbs, more complex carbs) and getting on the exercise bike every so often. The small tweaks led to me losing 3.4 pounds over those 3-4 weeks. That’s nice.

But ‘losing pounds’ is deceptive, as I lecture often enough. It only counts if they’re the right pounds. Taking caliper measurements suggests my bodyfat is down from 22% to 21%, which could be within the range of error (as is the weight), but my waistline is also down a little over 1/2 an inch. These measurements are consistent over the days, so I’ll bet it’s a real loss. Getting under 20% is my main goal, being over 20% bugs me immensely, even though low 20s is ‘acceptable’ and somewhat ‘average.’

What it means is that, doing the math, I went from carrying 50.6 pounds of fat on me to 47.6, a 3 pounds loss, while also losing .4 pounds of muscle. You’ll always lose muscle unless focusing hard on weightlifting, which I’m not right now. But I’m happily surprised at how little muscle I’m losing, at least initially here (it may go up).

So if you guys pledge to give away some books to bookcrossing, I may not be ashamed to take my shirt off on the blog at the end of April if this keeps up.

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