Skinny to Strong

In my previous post I wrote about my progress in the last 3 weeks of June. Not very good right. Instead of gaining a pound a week like most other weeks before, I only gained 0.2 lbs per week during those 3 weeks. But there is more bad news to come. Look at these graphs. Weight Chart Body Fat% Chart Lean Mass Chart What happened here? I lost a whole lot of weight, but even worse I lost a lot of muscle and my fat % increased. How did it happen? Well I was out vacationing on the July 4th weekend. In the 4 days I visited Grand Canyon, Tucson, Disney Land and Universal Studios. While I tried to eat as much as I can and as often as I could, I did not eat enough times and most meal was more than I should have eaten. The calories just piled up in sudden bursts and then there was too much gap between meals. Add to it, all the walking I had to do through out the day and then add the stress that is associated with such a tightly packed vacation, the planning, the driving etc. I was burning ...

In my previous post I gave some body weight and fat numbers for the 3 month period starting from April 2010 to Jun 2010. It is now time for some graphs. Here are my weight, fat and lean mass graphs for the same period. Weight Chart Fat% Chart Lean Mass Chart As you can see I pretty much kept my fat% constant. There were a few jumps here and there, but in the end, I am still under 10% body fat and can still see my abs definition slightly as is expected at around 10% BF. Now for some observations. Right before I got sick my weight jumped a lot. That was around May 8th. The gain was probably just water weight. My body was perhaps retaining water as I was about to get sick. Interestingly, my caliper measurements have also gone awry and showed higher fat percentage. Right after I got sick and as I started recovering, I lost a lot of weight. This was around May 15th. There is a sharp drop in the weight and fat % dropped to the normal value. But I did lose some muscle as a result of fa...

Here are the weight and fat graphs for December 2009. Body Weight Graph Since I reached my goal of 125 lbs for the end of december I tried to maintain the same weight while I tried to reduce the fat. So I started eating the right number of calories that I need. As can be seen from the graph I was maintaining my weight for a while but then it started dipping for no apparent reason. I increased my calories a bit and it stared going up quickly. It is quite hard to keep track of the exact amount of food to eat. Body Fat % Graph While I maintained the same weight I started to see an increase in body fat. I was not sure why that would be the case. Am I losing muscle so quickly? A small increase in weight causes the fat to shoot up quickly while a stable weight still increases it slowly. The only option left to loose fat is to loose weight? I don't like the idea at all. I am also doubting the fat monitor. It tends read the fat changes a while after the weight has changed. So if ...

Here are the weight and fat graphs for November 2009. Body Weight Chart For the first few days the weight gain was slow, but after a couple of weeks the weight went down. Clear indication that I was not getting enough calories. That was when I increased my calories from 1800 to 2000. See my previous post for more details about it. As soon as I increased the calories I saw a sudden and quick weight increase for a couple of weeks and then it started dipping. I am not sure of the reason, but it could be because I was over training. I rested for the first week of december so that should give enough time for my body to recover. Body Fat % Chart The flip side of gaining weight is the fat. I have been constantly gaining fat. Even during the time when I could not gain any weight I was still getting fat. Perhaps over training, muscle loss and calorie deficiencies could be the reason. I have to take better care of my body. We will see how december goes.

For the sake of posterity, here are the weight and fat graphs from last month Body Weight Chart Body Fat Chart The graphs start from my lowest weight and fat points which was on September 23, 2009. I was about 117.3 lbs at 10.2% body fat at the time. I started eating more calories from there on and now after 5 weeks I am 120.8 lbs at 12.2% body fat. After about 2 weeks of eating a lot I started seeing that my body fat % was moving faster than my weight gradient. So I decided to cut back a little bit, but then I lost weight (and fat) quickly. And then again I increased my calories. Here are the gains I have made last month: Body weight gain: 3.5 lbs Body fat% gain: 2% Body fat gain: 2.8 lbs Muscle mass gain: 0.7 lb I fell very short at my muscle gain, adding just 0.7 lb of muscle while putting on a lot of weight.