Changing Body Math Update

It's been about four months since I made my first post (I realize I made a math error which I'll point out below but I didn't feel like going back to change.) about working out and losing weight so I figured I was due for an update.

In the last six months, I've dropped my weight from 305 lbs. to 270 lbs for a gross loss of 35 lbs. When I started working out I had 30% body fat and have trimmed that number down to 26%. Multiply all those respective numbers together and I've gone from carrying 91.5 lbs. of fat down to 70.2 lbs. There are 21.3 lbs. of fat (the weight of this 1 year old dog) which *poof* no longer exist.

The other 14 lbs is water weight. Last time I accounted this weight as gaining muscle which is simply not the case. Unless I were losing bone density or giving away internal organs, this is just my body adjusting the amount of water it holds. Think about the blood maintaining the fat which is no longer needed and reabsorbed by the body and it makes sense.

The correct way of figuring out the muscle I've added goes back to the body fat percentage. I've lost 4% of fat which means that a greater proportion is made up of something else now. There are factors like my bones becoming more dense but for the most part it's muscle taking up a greater proportion of my overall weight. Conservatively saying 3% is new muscle growth and 1% other factors that means I've gained 8.1 lbs of muscle in the last six months or about as much as one gallon of water weighs.

1 pound of muscle burns 50 calories at day which means that I'm burning an additional 405 calories per day simply by changing my body makeup. Out of the Bs, that's the same as 2 plain bagels, 4 bananas or light beers, 5.4 oz of blue cheese dressing, about 10 spears of brocolli or 40.5 tbsp. of BBQ sauce. To put it another way, at rate of 405 calories a day, a pound of fat would burn away in about eight and a half days. And that's just existing at rest, not taking into account that muscle actually getting used when I work out.

The thing which I have a greater understanding of since I wrote my last post is that I shouldn't be as concerned with my weight as much as I should be focused on my body fat percentage. According to the BMI scale, I'm obese and will be until I can slide under 263 lbs with a goal of 218 to be on the high end of normal.

Well, if we go back to the top, my baseline weight which includes bones, organs, muscle and water weight but not fat is about 200 lbs. To be 218 pounds, assuming my bones growing more dense and my muscles getting stronger equals my water weight loss, I could carry only 18 lbs. of fat. for a very athletic 8% body fat. For some perspective, Michael Jordan (a world-class athelete) weighed 216 lbs. during his last year in the NBA. And that's the top end of what they consider "normal."

If you focus on body fat percentage instead a different picture emerges. By this metric being over 25% body fat for a male is obese. So let's say I maintain my present weight but lose that 1% body fat. That's only 2.7 lbs. of fat I need to lose. Even if I drop my another 10 pounds to 260, the north end of what I weighed during college and consider a good guideline, I'll need to shed 5.2 lbs of body fat to get to 25%.

There is work yet to be done. Still results are happening and there's no reason why I can't achieve my goals over the next few months. I knew this was going to be at least a year-long process when I started six months ago. With the progress I've made, it looks like I can start setting some goals further out than I expected.