13 August 2011

Muscle is not fat

I had probably the stupidest eureka moment I have ever had this week. Today to be exact.

After jacking around with my weight for the last year, I have been sort of miserable since May trying to stay at or around 71.5kgs, which has been my goal. Not miserable, really, but it's been hard. I weigh myself every day and any disturbance in the force would send me up. I couldn't figure it out: I was so careful to eat between 2,300-2,500 kCals a day, and I was burning at least 2,700+ most days. Why, on a dime would I go up? It didn't make any sense.

Well, my parents were here in July and my dad and I ran about 26 miles in 7 days. I ran another 11 after he left and as I assumed, with little change to my diet, I went up. And I gave up basically. Eff it, I will watch what I eat, pay attention to my calories, but that's all I can do. I can't worry about it.

Everyone but me could guess what has been happening: my body has been trying to build muscle and I, like an angry dictator, have been saying no, we only lose bad weight here, we don't gain good weight.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I realised that I had been keeping by accident a complete record of how much fat mass I have had on my body all year. Body weight and body fat percentage. I check this every morning. Today, I played averaged did means of the average fat mass in my body for the year and, well, here they are in kilograms:
Jan 13.96562
Feb 13.307
Mar 12.95116
Apr 12.81929
May 12.17065
Jun12.14859
Jul 11.63065
Aug (to 13th) 11.29285
So for all my handwringing, I have been steadily losing body fat. 2.8 kgs this year so far. My body, as I have been being an asshole to it, has slowly been trying to tell me something: Dude, you need more muscle and food in your body. It's fine if you're going to keep up doing what you're doing, but you're just making it hard on yourself.

So basically for the last six months, my body has been trying to build muscle and I've been saying no and feeling miserable. The equation is/ has been working.

Great news. I can stop worrying.