Saturday, May 1, 2010

Ideal body weight

I had decided after the Memorial Marathon, I'd watch what I ate and try to lose about five pounds. I think what happened is I just kept eating like I did when I was training for the Olympic distance, but I haven't been burning off nearly as many calories. Plus, I'm not doing core work. All in all, I figured I could lose a bit.

Well, then, I was reading about juice diets in Triathlete. Years ago, my mom and I did a juice fast for seven days. While it was painful at the time, it was a great experience. I lost 10 pounds and only gained five back when we started eating solid food. And, I was detoxed...somewhat at least. Plus, everything we ate tasted absolutely amazing! We tried again the following year, but I had no success that time. It's been in the back of my mind to do again, but Triathlete brought it up again. I decided I was going to do a three-day juice fast to sort of kick start the weight loss/leaner thing. I had it planned for next week, but then I remembered we're having a ice-cream social thing for my boss on Thursday (what would be day 3), and I just don't want to have that sort of will power. It's tough to plan this around my racing this month (I have a climb tomorrow and a race on the 15th) because I expect it to hinder my workouts, etc. I could do MTW, but I'm not sure ice cream sandwiches are great the day after the fast. So I'm deciding when I should do that...thoughts?

Today, I was also reading Triathlete and it had an article about ideal race weight. So I did all the calculations, and it says I need to be at 123.5...about six pounds from where I am today. Well, actually, six pounds puts me in the 80th percentile in body fat percentage. And I didn't like knowing that I wasn't already at least in the 80th percentile. So that's my goal weight. No crazy diets (besides the juice thing, but I actually believe in them), just portion control and making sure I'm eating mostly whole foods. And continuing to work out, which isn't too big of a problem these days. Wish me luck!

2 comments:

diane said...

Good luck! I'm sure you'll do great on your weight loss plan. I'd love to know how you calculated the weight thing!
Great race report too. I'm glad you had fun. I feel crazy too sometimes because I like running, even when I don't like it. :-)

Jessica said...

It's fairly complicated. I looked for the article online, but I couldn't find it. I'll do the best I can:

First: Calculate your current body fat percentage(I used a website, but they suggest one of those at home scales.) Then take your current weight x body fat percentage. You now have your body fat mass. (140 x 0.22 = 30.8)

Second step: Take your current weight - body fat mass. You now have your lean body mass. (140 - 30.8 = 109.2)

Third step: Calculate your goal weight. Formula is your lean body mass / goal lean body mass percentage (which you can find by taking 1 - your goal body fat percentage in decimal form). The 80th percentile for women 18-24 is 17.1%, it's 18% for 30-39, 21.3% for 40-49, and 25% for women 50-59. (Ex: 109.2 / 0.82 = 133)

Does this make sense?