Celebrating The Bigger Picture.

Anyone who has attempted to lose a considerable amount of weight has reached a point of impasse. It feels like your body isn't responding any more, you start to add to your cheat days, the scale isn't moving but your clothes still fit. You have days when you feel thin and days where you feel puffy again. We all know it isn't all about the numbers on the scale. There are many factors that contribute to good health, and you owe it to yourself to know these factors and where you're at.

We have had a few challenges the last few weeks which have made eating clean and making workout time a bit of an issue. James came into contact with chicken pox at school after a solid month of congestion and a runny nose. He didn't end up with full on pox but it was a bit dicey there for a week or so. Immediately after that was dealt with, I got a lovely dose of poison ivy all over my lower legs. This alone made workouts hell with socks rubbing against the rash, I wanted to hack my legs off just to avoid the burning itch. At one point I was laying on the living room floor in frustrated tears, just rubbing my legs against the carpet in the middle of a workout. They are much better though, it's been almost 3 week and I ended up seeing two Dr's and the Naturopath (ND.) The ND loaded me up with remedies and it's slowly working. What worked best was a plant from the wild bush near a close friends home, Jewel Weed. It is amazing! I will write a separate post about the poison ivy because it ended up being a journey through natural remedies, some worked and some didn't.

That being said, I needed some motivation. So while I was at the ND for the poison ivy, I asked if I could also re-test my body to see where we are at internally. I am so very happy I did.

Without getting into a long winded speech about what happened, I will simply lay out the numbers for you.

January 2012              September 2012          Change

Weight  - 238.4            Weight - 213.1             - 25.3Lbs
Body Fat - 53.6%           Body Fat - 47.5%          - 6.1%
BMI - 42.2                  BMI - 36.7                 - 5.5
Visceral Fat - 10             Visceral Fat - 9              - 1
Muscle Mass - 21.1%         Muscle Mass 23.9%         + 2.8%

Weight is obviously the weight of your entire body. The normal weight for my age and height is 117-151 pounds. I weight myself first thing in the morning before food and after a bowl movement (You know you wanted to hear that!), as I find this is the most reliable number. Body Fat simply put, is the ratio of fat on your body in proportion to everything else. This is essential fat as well as storage fat. In non athletic women the normal to acceptable range of body fat is 21-31% (20-21% being ideal for fit women). BMI is your weight in relation to your height. By now most people know that this isn't a very reliable number due to the fact that many factors can contribute to the outcome (i.e, muscle, pregnancy). However, the normal BMI is 18.5-25. In this instance, I am very proud that I moved down almost 2 classes of obesity in terms of BMI. This is a huge deal to me. Visceral Fat is the fat in the body that is packed around the organs. The low risk ranges for Visceral fat is 1-12. I have always been surprisingly low in the visceral fat department, which is typical of women with bigger thighs and bums. Visceral fat is a very dangerous type of fat. You can read up on it here. Muscle Mass is something that varies from person to person and the best way to judge your Muscle Mass is directly related to your Body Fat percentage.

I am completely overjoyed with these numbers! It means that while I still have a lot of work to do, it is paying off in the best ways possible.

Yay!