Fitness Update
Last November, I took a reading from my personal trainer's body fat monitor. At the time, I weighed 160 lbs, 27.68 (17.3%) of which were fat. After a year of regular exercise and watching my diet, I was now officially "fit."
In the last five months, I've successfully maintained my healthy weight. However, after taking another reading this morning (this time with an HBF-306 of my very own), my body fat is now at 13.6%. In five months–months that include Thanksgiving and Christmas–I've lost 6.33 lbs of fat, and put on roughly the same amount of muscle. I now have, technically speaking, the body of an "athlete."
Ultimately, I'd like to get down to around 10%, which means I have about 5.5 lbs of body fat left to lose. Training for a marathon ought to do it, don't you think?
Comments
Don't get your heart set on losing body fat during marathon training, though. I've heard plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, and from what I know about the metabolic changes wrought by long-distance running, once you get above the one-hour mark for constant aerobic effort, your metabolism shifts to conserve your body's energy store - i.e. fat - and starts producing cortisol, which deteriorates your body's most metabolically expensive tissue - muscle. Of course, since you're paying more attention to your diet than most, your mileage may vary.
Good luck!