For the last year I have casually mentioned my fitness goals on this site every once in a while, but have left the majority of (sparse) updates on my fitness blog. The information contained in my brand new pink Minnie Mouse folder is too important to relegate there, however.
On Saturday evening Heather and I went to our “gym,” the Konami Sports Club in Okubo. We didn’t go to work out, though, but rather to have our body compositions checked. See, our first body check was done on 6/2/2007, so Saturday was 364 days later, and we thought we owed it to ourselves to see what damage we’d done.
Without further ado, some numbers (DYLAN):
6/2/2007:
Height: 5 feet 7 inches
Weight: 72.5 kg
Arm fat (ewwww): 13 mm
Leg fat (ewwww): 18 mm
Body fat percentage: 30.4% (OBESE)
Weight in fat: 21.8 kg
Lean mass: 50.2 kgs
Bad times, friends. Bad times. I have pictures to prove it. BUT NOW!
5/31/2008:
Height: 5 feet 7 inches (DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!)
Weight: 69.6 kg
Arm fat (ewwww): 5 mm
Leg fat (ewwww): 7 mm
Body fat percentage: 16.8% (NOT AT ALL OBESE)
Weight in fat: 11.4 kg
Lean mass: 57.4 kg
YEAH.
For those of you that don’t speak the Holy Language of Metric, let me break that down for you:
I am the same height, which sucks. Whatever. I’m going to get some taller shoes or something.
It APPEARS that I have lost only a few pounds, but that is deceiving. You can see from my fat mass/lean mass numbers that I have, in fact, lost 22.9 pounds of fat and GAINED 15.9 pounds of muscle. This is despite the facts that a) Japan completely sucks for getting in shape and b) my Crohn’s meds have the unfortunate side-effect of breaking down muscle tissue.
I have also lost 1/3 inch of fat on my arms, and nearly 1/2 inch on my legs. God, just writing that makes me realize how much I just didn’t care about my body AT ALL just one year ago. Suffice to say, though, I look a lot better now. I am not posting pictures yet, but rest assured I will before my time in Japan is up.
I also feel a lot better. I have more energy than I ever thought was possible, and my lifts have all increased more than I thought they would, even in a whole year. Even better, maybe, is how much damn CHARACTER I have now. I have developed mental discipline that serves me in every area of my life, and I owe it all to the intense amount of effort I expend every day to reach my fitness goals.
I am not anywhere near finished, though. I am still planning on dropping another 10-12 pounds of fat before we move back to the US, and even then I am only going to be about 1/4 of the way through my body recompositioning. 3 more years of hard work and even harder “dieting” and I’ll reach my goals, though. I will continue to keep everyone updated, though, via both this blog and the fact that I will no longer be wearing any clothes.