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It's been exactly three months since I started tracking my weight, and I don't have much to report, really. I lost 44 pounds in 3 months, and I even managed to lose 5 pounds during my vacation. I have pretty much plateaued since then, though. This is a beauty of daily weighing and graphing results: I know that I have a (potential) problem, and I know how to address it (eat less or move more). I am not to concerned about the plateau, though, since I am so much closer to my target weight now. (Whatever my target weight is -- I really have no clue! The idea is to go down until it feels right. My guess is that loosing ten more pounds will not hurt at all.)I also started something that I should have started from the very beginning: tracking my body fat weight percentage. When you lose weight, especially as quickly as I did, you always lose some fat and some muscles. It is unavoidable.* However the goal is obviously to lose fat, not muscles. That's why it is important to track your body fat weight (or percentage). If I had this idea when I started, I would've, for example, measured my waist every morning and recording the results. (I have some indirect evidence, though: I went down 6 pants sizes so far, from 36 to 30.)
I know even better now. I got a special fat measuring gadget called Accu-Measure Calipers
. It looks like cheap plastic calipers, and for a good reason. It is cheap plastic calipers. However, they say that it is a rather accurate way of measuring body fat -- allegedly the best you can do at home. So far, according to it, I have 22% of body fat, which is "normal" but not great. It will be interesting to see how this number changes and how my fat weight loss will be correlated with my total weight loss.------
*There are actually two ways to avoid it: either loose weight very slowly and exercise a lot (to offset the muscle losses), or fast for a long time (to enter the state of ketosis, when the body uses almost exclusively fat for the metabolism). I might try the both approaches soon -- but not right now.
