Standing on my Soap Box

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I have continued on a journey of getting healthier. I have been doing this now for almost 8 months now. I can run now without getting winded. The longest I have run so far is 10 miles, and by the end of the month I will be able to say that I have ran a half marathon (a 13.1 mile run).

The one thing with this whole “journey” has been my biggest battle has been the scale. I think that is going to be a never ending battle. As of my last weigh in at the end of July, I have lost a grand total of 20.2 pounds. I have been at this for 32 weeks now. So according to my scale I am not even losing a pound a week. I have been losing about .62 (point 62) of a pound each week. I am still over 200 pounds by more than a couple pounds. ARGH!

Throughout this journey though, I have been taking monthly measurements. I searched the internet and found a website that does the calculations from your measurements to determine your body fat %. I know that the water test is the most accurate, but I figured there had to be some site that would be close without the water, or the caliper pinchers that require two people to do this. In my searches, I had one website say that I was 24% body fat. REALLY??? I was 100 pounds overweight. There is no way I was only 24% body fat. So I did a little more searching and found a website that seems to be a touch more accurate than some of them. The site that I used said that I was 56.5 percent body fat. THAT I could believe. (a website that does it is www.calculator.net/army-body-fat-calculator.html )

So on to my scale saga…

So the end of July, I stepped on the scale, and yes according to that horrible piece of plastic, metal and junk, I have lost 20 pounds. FINALLY. When I did my measurements I lost a few inches all over. I plugged my measurements into the body calculator website, and VOILA, I am down to 39.9% body fat from 56.5%. But what does that mean to me?  According to my calculations I have lost 46 pounds of fat, but I gained 28.5 pounds of muscle. See I told you my scale lied to me.

Now with that said, please don’t tell me that fat weighs more than muscle. One pound of fat and one pound of muscle BOTH WEIGH ONE POUND. It’s just that the pound of muscle takes up a LOT less space than a pound of fat does.

So why do I tell you this? A) because I can, and B) to encourage you to stay off the scale. Please do not to step on the scale every day, or even every week. What do you clothes feel like? Are they buttoned up tightly and looking for extra reinforcements to stay shut, or are your pants doing like mine are and only staying up because you have hips? The scale is a tool that can make you feel depressed, and as far as I am concerned they need to be buried in the deep blue sea.

The other reason why I am telling you this is to encourage you. Trust me, if I can do this with my wonky thyroid that makes issue with my metabolism, then you certainly can.