Mid-week motivation time for me.
Even when I was 178 pounds in high school, I had a little pudgy gut. I was “skinny fat”. The only time I remember being really fit was back when I was a Mormon missionary (not Mormon anymore, nor a missionary) and riding my bike constantly. I rode my bike so much that I got stretch marks on my butt from the muscle development. Some of that leg development has stayed with me as an adult, and I’ve always retained the ability to lift heavy weights that make other people at work balk.
But this morning for the first time ever, my Wii Fit showed a straight-up (that is, no adjustment for clothing) weight of 220 pounds this morning when I took my weight in my shorts and T-shirt. Shortly, I’ll be down into the teens, and another ten pounds gone! The next weight goal is 215 pounds, and at my current rate of weight loss that’s 2-3 weeks away. Sure, the ultimate goal is 190 pounds or so where I’ll be below 10% body fat, but it took me many years to get this fat; it will take a while to get myself into better shape than I’ve ever been before. I’ve never been lean and muscular before. Sure, I’ve been skinny, but had basically no muscles and didn’t eliminate my pot belly at that low weight.
A decade and a half of holding babies, and working a job that required me to sling around 70-pound boxes regularly has kept my muscle mass up a bit; I tend toward muscle, while my identical-height co-worker weighs seventy pounds less than I do. He’s on the low end of the BMI scale as a tall, skinny guy, while I’m toward the high end as a somewhat naturally muscular fellow.
Well, I’ve lost thirty-one pounds total since starting low-carbing in September, accelerated by deciding to join a gym mid-October. Since I’ve packed on muscle as well, that means according to my latest body-fat readings I’ve lost exactly forty pounds of fat.
Do you know how huge that is? That’s not small, that’s not some insignificant change that can be attributed to water weight, or that can be disguised in a photo by “sucking it in”. That’s the weight of my smallest child! I’ve lost a person worth of weight. People told me I looked my age at thirty-five; could I possibly look younger? I dunno, my wife says the lack of body fat on my face makes me look years younger. One of my best friends, Matt, (yep, same name) had the reaction of “Holy Crap!” when he saw me because he hadn’t seen me in so long and my weight had gone down so much.
Whatever level you’re at, wherever you are in your fat-loss and muscle-building goals, you can always find at least one thing to move up a notch to the next level. That’s what I’m learning, that there’s always room for improvement no matter how hard I’m working. I just have to always find that one thing I can do to move forward rather than stagnating.
–Matt B.