Joe's Body Weight: Can that Dude be Any Skinnier?

I now weigh 166 lbs.

Haven't logged weight online in a couple of months. I've been tracking it daily in my FitDay software. I need to spend some time and go through the old data to get it onto the web.

My methodolody is as follows: I wake up and pee/poop before measuring my weight. I don't drink/eat anything before measuring. I weigh within five minutes of waking up.

The one thing FitDay doesn't do is show a daily calorie vs. daily weight chart. Such a chart would help me find critical calorie points where I lose, maintain and gain weight. I've been losing weight at about 1.5 lbs per week. Trying to keep the weight loss slow so that I don't lose muscle. If you look at my body mass index I'm still in the center of the healthy zone. I need to be closer to the low side of healthy.

Peter Reid is 6'2" (roughly my height) and weighs 155lbs. Now, it's impossible to pick your own ideal weight based on somebody else's. But it's an indicator. Peter has roughly the same body type as I do. Tall and goofy looking.

So I'll lose some more weight and see how I feel. I need some sort of benchmark to make sure I'm not losing muscle. Not sure what that benchmark should be... maybe my max squat... needs to be something that doesn't involve my weight... like a 40km time trial wouldn't work. Overall the weight loss seems to be going well. No targets, just a process of finding my ideal racing weight.

Dana mentioned last night that I looked like I had lost weight. Not sure I like the notion that I look like I've lost weight... I'm already ackwardly skinny and the thought of being more skinny brings back insecurities from high school about my body.

As a triathlete, to get the most out of my body, I need to master the nutrition and body weight. So I'll let performance and success be a higher order concern than my own vanity. The numbers along with the fat on my belly, back and sides say I should lose some poundage. I know it's hard for people to believe, seeing as I look so skinny, but there's a lot of extra weight on my frame right now.

I've been working with my caloric intake, slowly taking it down to figure out an optimal point to lose weight. But I don't want to do it too quickly. If I lose muscle I put the entire season at risk.

One thing I have been doing wrong lately is working out without carbs. My rationale, and a common one, was that since the base period is about teaching the body to burn fat to generate energy I should avoid carbs just before training. I'm not working out too hard so this made sense. Force the body to use fat. Train the fat energy cycle. But that's the wrong approach for one big reason. As Chris Carmichael points out in Food For Fitness, I risk losing muscle. The body, when not given carbs, will resort to both fat and muscle burning. Not good. I'll change practices immediately.

I can feel less fat on my body. When I ran this week I felt a little more spry. I'm wondering if the extra weight was exacerbating my knee condition.

It's fun. My body is like this science project. I do things and see changes. I've never tried to affect my weight. Actually, that's a lie. I tried to lose weight all last season but failed because I had no visibility. No visibility on the number or type of calories. No weight tracking. I was flying blind. Now that I'm tracking everything that I eat I've got the visibility I need to control my weight.

One of the biggest results from the tracking is that my weight doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as it did. I fluctuate within a few pounds. Last year I was fluctuating about six or seven pounds every few days. Bad diet control. I'm eating much better these days.

So that's where I'm at with the body weight issue.