Going commando, getting more perspective and other Friday Fun

Ha! Not like /that/! Get your mind out of the gutter...

I'm a big fan of body shapers. Anything to help smooth out the bumps and bulges till they smooth themselves out is fine thing in my book. Problem is, everytime I wear one, and then someone comments on how much weight I've lost I feel like a big ol' cheater. Yes, I've put in lots of work (except for this week, but more on that later) and yes, I've lost weight and inches, but still, it's like mis-representing myself when I'm wearing it. Then agian, it's probably only me that really cares. Either way, today, I decided to go without the shaper and I feel... nekkid. It really helps that I put my freshly washed size 14(!) jeans on and zipped them up with no issue and minimal muffin top. So I looked at myself and went 'eh, I can go without... my top hides the minimal muffin.' Not that I feel all super slim & trim, but I feel good about how I look and progress I've made. And no one has commented either way - no "WOW! you look GREAT!" but no "umm... eew" either. :P

Speaking of progress, I was getting really frustrated with it but was again reminded of the power of perspective. The scale has finally started to move in a downward trend which is wonderful, but the callipers are giving me issues. I mean, I know they measure milimeters, but OMG those are tiny! And 1/2 a % can be as frustrating as 1/2 a pound when you've been busting butt (again, except this week... I'm getting there). As I mentioned before, I'm approaching the end of the current 12 week cycle and trying to figure out if 1) what I'm doing actually worked and 2) what to do next. Then I checked my handy dandy spreadsheet to see if there really was any progress. Here's what I found:

7/14:
Weight - 181.2
Body Fat - 36.8%
Body fat weight - 66.68
Lean Body Mass Weight - 114.52

9/17
Weight - 176.8
Body Fat - 33.55%
Body fat weight - 59.32
Lean Body Mass Weight - 117.48

WOW! Now I understand the using different ways to measure success.

So in roughly 2.5 months I only lost 4.4 pounds. If I just stuck with that, while it's great that it's a loss not a gain, it's soooo slooooowww and discouraging.

BUT! I really lost _7.36_ pounds of body fat and, more importantly, GAINED almost 3 pounds of metabolism boosting musckles!

::happy dance:: I already got myself a gift this week - a belt. I'm not quite in size 14 accross the board but my size 16's are way too huge so figured a belt is a mad stylin accessory that will help with this in between stuffs.

And as for my slacker-ish week. Yeah. Tuesday had a great workout, Wednesday had a great workout and was still sore from tuesday's ab & arm work. Yesterday, after a night of waking up about every hour or so, my alarm went off and the splitting pain in my head said, 'not just no, but he$$ no. You're staying in bed.' alarm was reset and a few more zzz's were caught. I spent the better part of the day doing pain management on my sinus migraine and felt well enough to do the strength portion of the biggest loser workout. (Oddly easy in a tough sort of way). I had every intention of getting back to the gym this morning but again was up a portion of the night and then discovered (too late) that I hadn't reset my alarm. So... apparently it wasn't my week to do lots of exercise. ::shrug::

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