It's all about the weight...175 and dropping.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011 Weight. Like so many of us, I’m motivated by it. All of my professional life, I’ve preached that it’s not the weight, but the composition…body fat…that counts. And that’s true. Still…I’m driven by the weight and the scale. No matter what my level of conditioning, I’m always happy to be losing…as most of us are.

As so many of you know, I’ve been following the Paleo Diet and emphasizing my Survival Workout for the last few months. This is a radical change for a guy who has never paid much attention to the diet and always placed the highest emphasis on the aerobic conditioning. “Burn more calories than you eat…and the way to burn the most calories is doing something aerobic,” I would say. And yes…when I ride 2 hours, I burn close to 2,000 calories while a typical Survival Workout is only burning 600. Yet…I’m losing weight like crazy, building muscle and strength, and seldom hungry or having cravings.

I finished tonight’s workout exhausted. The humidity and temperature were up once more and I’d elected to run my Clear Creek course to see if I could break my pr from last fall. I knew it would be a challenge for the same reasons it was a week ago. I’m not running much, so the endurance for running would be lacking and the heat/humidity would play a factor. My legs weren’t exactly fresh after yesterday’s long ride, either. Still, I started aggressively and was a couple of minutes ahead of my pr pace at the halfway point. This didn’t really surprise me…I’m 15 pounds lighter than I was last fall and the running felt easy. Shortly after the halfway point though, I began to labor. I went into survival mode…just hold a decent pace and I’d still beat the pr…but as I neared the 50-minute mark of the run and was only 30 seconds ahead of pace, I decided the effort would end there and be saved for another day.

I backed off because I could feel the heat and sweat loss taking its toll. I know my body well enough to hear what its saying. Beating that pr by a few seconds when I know I could crush it with the right conditions meant little. I walked over to Clear Creek and plunged in…quickly bringing my core temperature back down in the cool, spring water.

Once home, I stripped and headed for the scale…something I’ve been doing almost daily for a week. The ‘weight’ owns me lately and when the scale read 174.5, it made me extremely happy. I know part of that is water I just dropped on the run, but I consistently weigh in at the conclusion of workouts…a time when things for me are comparable. I suspect I’m closer to 177 right now and about 10 pounds from my peak triathloning weight, but again…what’s the body fat…what’s the condition level? I know they’re both damned good right now and that alone should keep me happy. Still…I just love losing weight.

Run workout: 50 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 140 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 800.