My Fitness Challenge
I’m here in Chicago at my uncle and aunt’s beautiful home. My uncle is a former college football player and my aunt is physical education teacher so they are both really into fitness. As an example, my uncle wakes up every day at 4:30 AM to go to the gym and they also have a home gym here in the basement.
I’ve been working a lot and traveling so I haven’t exactly been the best about going to the gym and to be frank, eating the best of foods. I used to wake up at 6 AM every morning to go to the gym, keep a log of the foods I ate.
When I was in the bathroom this morning taking my shower to get ready for the day, I looked down as I was standing over the sink and saw the scale. This was one of those fancy digital scales that tells you not only your body weight but also your body fat percentage. I haven’t been on a scale in at least three weeks and probably much longer but in my moment of curiosity, I decided to calibrate the scale and check out my stats.
The first time I stepped on the scale, I was in for a little shock but I then realized I put the scale on the wrong settings. After a quick adjustment, I stepped on again and found out my new stats: I weigh 182.6 pounds with 14.8% body fat. For being 5’9” that still technically makes me overweight but the body mass index charts just don’t really work with me and my body composition. The fat percentage tables says I’m in the fitness category which is probably a little bit more accurate.
Given that I’ll be headed to South America in a few months I’d really like to lose a few pounds of fat before I go to the beaches of Brazil. I’m setting a goal of reducing my body fat percent from essentially 15% to sub-10%. On a rough basis, that means I need to lose 12 pounds of fat.
Healthy weight loss is usually around a pound a week so given my time frame, a more realistic goal would be to lose 8-10 pounds which I think is possible with the right diet and exercise.
Wish me luck! I’m shooting to lose 10 pounds of fat by the end of October!
