A Little Motivation

So I finished week 1 of Insanity and it wasn't so bad...what I could do of it, lol. Oh who am I kidding, even what I could do of it had me dripping sweat and wishing I was back in my warm comfy bed! It is a great way to start the morning though and keeps me going through the day. Andrew and I had karate class last night, too, and Sensei Seahorn really put us through the paces. It was awesome fun!

So I said something about motivation in the title of this post. Welllllll, I have two topics that I want to type about that I think will motivate everyone.

The first one is our Couch 2 5k group (C25k) at work. We finished up week 5 last Thursday. At the beginning of this venture, Paula and I had a hard time convincing our group that they could, in fact, do it. It is a bit scary when you look at the plan if you haven't ran in a while, this is true. The first week we had to run 90 seconds, then walk 90 seconds, then repeat about 8 times. Doesn't sound like too much, but to a first timer, that is daunting. Each week the amount of running goes up. On Thursday of last week, the plan called for 20 solid minutes of running! And our group killed it!!!! They really rocked! Not only did they finish but they had a decent pace the whole time! What a sense of pride and accomplishment. So the motivation? Well, did you read the paragraph? LOL! It CAN be done. It really can be. It may seem like it can't but just keep going and you will find yourself capable of way more than you thought possible.

The second topic is body fat percentage versus weight. A few years ago, I saw a snippet of some program on TV that really stuck with me. A woman was about to start a program to lose weight. Her sister was worried about her and wanted her to drop some pounds. Before she started this, the instructor measured her BF% by having her submersed in water (the most accurate way to do this). Just for kicks he also measured her sister. Turns out that her thin sister's BF% was nearly as high as hers. Her sister didn't understand the concept of Fit > Skinny! Of course we want to be thin to some degree, but we really need to make sure our BF% is where it should be.

Just to give you an idea of this, here is my weigh in last week vs this morning:
218.8 lbs x 45.8% BF (don't judge too harshly please:-) = 100.21 lbs of BF (gross!!!)
217.0 lbs x 45.1% BF = 97.86 lbs of BF

So while it looks like I only lost 1.8 lbs (which isn't too bad for a week anyway) I actually lost 2.34 lbs of BF! So why the difference? I gained some lean muscle mass! And that will help me burn more calories. The loss of body fat is the more important number for sure!

Are you motivated yet?
~KC