192.6 - back on track!

I am pleased to share that after yesterday's careful calculation of everything I did and ate I am back on track. I weighed in at 192.6 this morning, that is down from 198.8 Monday morning. This leads me to believe that alot of that gain was water retention, but it feels great to be back on track. Hooray. I am still a pound or so up from my lowest weight, but I hope to be back to that weight by my weekly weigh-in Thursday.

I have been trying to figure out where my motivation started faltering and I have traced it back to what I see as an unlikely source - getting a body fat composition test done. I went in expecting to get a relatively bad number based on the calculations I had found online. Based on all of those I was still dealing with a pretty high percentage of fat. However, as I have learned many of those calculations don't take into account enough factors to be accurate. When I went in to be tested, they asked if a new employee could observe while they did the testing so that he could learn how to do it. I was of course mortified because it was a guy, and it wasn't until about two weeks that I felt comfortable enough to "own" what my weight is and accept it. I didn't want to share my weight in front of him. While I am sure he could have cared less, it was difficult for me - but I think doing it once made it easier to do now, so I am grateful. Anyway, the actual test was easy and straight-forward - they put in your weight, height, bone structure, some stats on your exercise, and then put a sensor on your bicep and do two readings. I was shocked when they told me that my body fat percentage was only 19.1%. I think they may have been too! They were both said "that's GREAT, good for women is between 20 and 25%." I shared with them that I had lost alot of weight recently and was shocked by the numbers, they asked how I did it and I gave them a quick recap.

In that moment, I was SO proud of myself, so proud of everything I had accomplished. But in that moment, I also found myself a bit intimidated by the numbers. Given my weight of 191 pounds and 19.1% body fat, that meant I had just over 36 pounds of fat left on my body. 36 pounds...and I wanted to lose another 15-20. The thoughts swirled in my head: "how on earth is that possible", "I will never get to my goal", "maybe I should just give up now", "why push myself so hard to get there when it will never be maintainable". In that moment when I found out my body fat percentage was "normal" I gave myself a permission slip to slack off. It's taken me a few weeks to realize this, but I am glad I finally realized where my lack of motivation has come from so that I can work on getting myself back in the right mind set. So much of a weight loss journey is mental and emotional. I have to remind myself to take time to focus on that too!

Today is a "rest day" on my half marathon training schedule. I woke up this morning and put another hour of swimming in at the pool. I may do some DDR or Zumba on the wii later. It will depend on how my back feels. Apparently, when laying on the floor playing with your kids you need to prepare yourself for injuries. My four year old daughter jumped knees first onto my lower back yesterday and it is pretty painful. I spent last night on a heating pad and am doing the same as I type this blog post. I am praying its better by tomorrow because I still have 13 miles to run by Saturday!

And to make things a bit more interesting, a quick poll question: If you could only do ONE race the rest of your life, which would it be and why?