Train to maintain

Official blog weigh in this morning and I posted another new low of 14 stone 7.6 pounds. Body fat was up a bit on last week, but I think it is just a blip.

I met up with my mum today, who has been away and who I haven’t seen in a couple of weeks. She thought I must have lost at least two stone (obviously not in the last two weeks, but overall) as I looked so different. She couldn’t believe that it was just short of one and a half stone. If I hadn’t been weight training, I probably would have lost two stone, and maybe be a similar size to what I am now. But I certainly wouldn’t have been the same shape.

Hubby was reviewing our Turbulence Training transformation challenge month 2 workout schedule to go on the fridge. I included our starting stats and our end-of-week-4 stats. Just out of interest, because I haven’t posted them anywhere else I don’t think, here they are:

	Start	End Wk 4	Start	End Wk 4
Weight	15′ 0.6	14′ 9.8	13′ 3.2	13′ 1.0
% Body Fat	45.4%	43.6%	21.0%	19.7%
Lean Body Mass	8′ 3.0	8′ 4.1	10′ 6.3	10′ 6.9

He asked me if I’d be happy if I continued to lose weight but my lean body mass stayed about the same. Hell, yes. It is practically impossible to gain muscle mass and lose weight at the same time, because one requires a calorie surplus and one a deficit. It is sometimes seen in people completely new to training and with a lot of weight to lose, but really, the goal of all this weight training (apart from the fact that I like feeling stronger) is to maintain my lean body mass whilst losing weight. I have lost 20 pounds of fat. It’s awesome. So my weight loss might not be as drastic as if I hadn’t been weight training, but my body composition, and hence my metabolism, sure as hell is a lot better.

Today, I had to practically tie my favourite trousers onto my body to stop them coming down over my not-inconsiderable hips. I can’t even have them taken in as they are now pretty much the wrong shape for my body. I suppose this is good news.

I start my new job tomorrow (today actually – it’s the early hours. I’m so excited, I can’t sleep). The uniform consists of tracksuit pants and T-shirts. As most of my trackie pants have holes in them and are not suitable for a work environment, perhaps I will go shopping for some new ones. In a smaller size. I hope.