Weigh In Wednesday: Body Fat

This was definitely an off week for me and it didn't feel right, even before the sadness of Monday. Friday night we went to a friend's going away party and I ate too much. I weighed in this morning at 156.6 so I'm up almost 2 pounds from last week. Good thing that I didn't have a chance to get down to Victoria's Secret and buy those two new bras, otherwise I'd have to return them this week. Which makes me wonder, since weight fluctuates, what should I do with  my rewards if I go back up? Hide them away in the closet and not use them until I'm back down again?

My skin calipers and body tape measure came in the mail from Amazon.com this week so it was time to crunch some numbers and face the cold reality. Unfortunately, I lived with the fear of my body fat percentage for 10 years in the Army and I was faced with all kinds of humiliation. If you don't meet the height/weight standards, you have to be measured for your body fat percentage. One year I flew to training to Colorado and was actually sent home because I was less than 1% over the school standards. I think I am a pear shaped woman with most of my weight sitting in my waist, hips, and thighs. Thankfully, there are some great websites that will help teach you how to take skinfold measurements with the calipers and you can input your measurements to find out your body fat percentage. I know that I'm going to be turning some of this weight into muscle so these measurements are going to be a better guide than my bathroom scale.

Chest: 24mm
Midaxillary: 24mm
Subprailiac: 22mm
Abdominal: 40mm
Thigh: 30mm
Tricep: 26mm
Subscapular: 24mm

Plug those numbers into the handy dandy online calculator and I'm a whopping 33.76% body fat, not pretty at all. A healthy woman should fall between 22-27% so I've got a long way to go. While I would love to focus on building muscle, I really need to work on dropping the fat so that I am healthy enough to build muscle instead of eating away at it due to improper nutrition. My darling Jose on the other hand is 15% body fat...

Wednesday 6/1: Chest and Back X and 4 miles on the treadmill in 47:25
Thursday 6/2: Walking on Erika's Field Trip 4.1 miles outside
Friday 6/3: Hiking Pilot Butte 2 miles (pigged out at bbq)
Saturday 6/4: Walk/Run/Sprint 6 miles on the treadmill in 1 hour 29 minutes
Sunday 6/5: Walked 2.9 miles around the neighborhood in 55 minutes
Monday 6/6: Absolutely  nothing
Tuesday 6/7: Walked 4.2 miles on the treadmill in 63 minutes
Total: 23.2 miles (short 3 miles and only did 1 P90X video)