Body Fat

This morning at the gym I burned around 550 calories in an hour!

To put that into perspective, a healthy meal would have around that many calories. I'm feeling pretty stoked about it. I also bought my first scale. It not only tells you how much you weigh, it also tells you what your body fat percentage is (very handy) and comes with some pamphlets that explain about body fat, how to lose body fat in a safe way, blah blah blah.

It gave an example of two women who had identical weights and heights and one of them, Mary, exercises and the other one, Sue, doesn't exercise, but instead cuts back on calories. They each lose 15 lbs except Mary lost a small percentage of body fat, while Sue gained a small percentage of body fat. Even though they both lost weight, Sue actually got fatter.

The story is also told in French and in Spanish. I found it quite funny that the names of the women changed in each language. In French, we had Marie and Nicole, and in Spanish we had Maria and some other Spanish name I can't remember right now.

That made me laugh.

It doesn't say this in the pamphlet, but I think the reason why Sue got fatter was because her body thought it was starving and started saving body fat to be used later. The most effective and efficient way to lose weight is through a combination of diet AND exercise. Doing one or the other doesn't work as well as the little story with Sue and Mary showed us.

That's why I drink 1% or skim milk DAVID! So no, I'm not buying 2%.

My scale also came with a chart so that you can see if you have a proportionate amount of body fat. How it measures your body fat is you have to program your gender, height, and age into the scale, then stand on the scale with bare feet, (if you wear socks it won't work) and the scale sends these electric pulses through your body and returns with a fairly accurate measure of how much body fat you have. It's pretty sweet.

In two days I've lost 3% body fat.

Think of a body builder. That guy would stand on a traditional scale and be "overweight" because he is so freaking biceptacle! But in reality, he is healthier than you or I because his body fat percentage is at like, 10% or something ridiculous like that!

I'm still listening to those hypnosis CD's! I listen to them every time I'm at the gym too. I find they put me in this trance and I can exercise longer and push myself harder than when I'm not listening to them.