The Tale of the Tape

I had my assessment this morning. I'm very pleased with my progress. My overall fitness score is 69 (on a scale from 1-100), which is described as above average, and more importantly, only 2 points below the assessment I did in April, a week before I broke my arm. My score in April was the highest score I'd had since I started taking these assessments in 2007, and this was my second highest. I started at 31 in 2007.

Here are the findings I'm most pleased with:

My percent body fat went from 39.7% to 33.6%. My lowest since I started taking these assessments was 33.2%.

I lost 13.2 pounds of fat--13.2 pounds in 8 weeks. That's a pound and a half less fat every week. Think about what a stick of butter looks like. I was losing the equivalent of 6 sticks of butter every week! That feels good. I'm only 2.4 pounds above my lowest level of fat in the past 4 years.

I gained 6 pounds of muscle. That's nearly a pound a week. I'm only a tenth of a pound from my highest muscle weight in the past 4 years.

And all that happened in 8 weeks! I improved on nearly every measure in the test, but those are the measures that meant the most to me.

And this is just the start. It's clear to me that in 8 more weeks, I will be in the best shape I've been in in the past 4 years. Brandon said that I won't be able to continue gaining muscle at the rate I have been, so as I continue to burn off fat, my weight will come down faster. But it was wonderful to see confirmation that my perception that my fat was melting away and that my muscles were growing confirmed by the assessment.

We leave for Nicaragua in the morning. I most likely won't be able to post from there, so I'll probably make my next post on 2/14--Valentine's Day.