It's a weight loss phase, yo!

Recently I found MyFitnessPal. Less recently, I was enjoying a frivolous offseason. Then suddenly the pants didn't fit quite as well. I knew it was time to bring back the MMNW (monday morning naked weight), and start tracking.

The last time I needed to drop some serious lb's, I went totally vegetarian and tracked everything I ate and stopped at 1800 calories a day. It worked great, I felt good, and I got from 205 lbs down to 175 in a reasonable time frame, and was ready to start training for my first Ironman. My comfort zone became staying around 175-180 during the season, and 180 - 185 during the offseason. Anything over 185 is cause for concern.

Given my race lineup for 2015 I decided to go ahead and start up a weight loss phase. I've been logging on MFP for 22 days straight now. My starting weight was 188 lbs even, and that's practically panic time. I like how MFP tracks, they start with a base number of calories to lose 2 lbs a week, then add in exercise calories earned. One of the key points to my weight loss is limiting the workouts to 45 minutes or so, and this time I haven't really been able to do that.

If I run more than about 5 miles, I have to eat more to recover and that would thwart the weight loss or push me over 1800 calories that day. I guess, now I'm conditioned well enough to run longer. I've been running 4 or 5 days a week, swimming 1 day, and doing hot yoga 1 day. I'm still getting on the yoga mat at home too almost every day, but that's not nearly the workout that hot yoga is. To lose 2 lbs a week they start me out at 1250 calories a day, and so far I've only had one day where I didn't add any exercise calories on top of that.

The losses haven't always been consistent but I'm learning how to manage the process. Every day I take what the scale gives me. Today's MMNW was 179 lbs and 20.5% body fat. There's always faster progress when you first start a phase like this, but 9 lbs over 3 weeks is still a pretty good average.  I'm going to try and start posting the MMNW every Monday. The goal is to average 2 lbs a week over the long term. Most of the online calculators say that for my height, age, and activity level I should get down to 160 lbs to maximize my power-to-weight ratio. I'll see how close I can get to that.

In 2011 training for my first ironman got me down to 165 for a while. But now that I'm almost 40 years old it's not as easy to shed the bodyfat anymore. So we'll just see how it goes. I'm trying to be all zen about it. Some days are up, most days are down, I'll just take what the scale gives me and stick to the plan.

Trying to lose weight during the holidays still sucks. Wings, beer, friends, Christmas parties, vacations, you name it. ugh.