194.6

So the score this morning was 194.6 on the Tanita scale.  The Bod Pod would place me at 194.131.  This was after 30 minutes of elliptical cross training, so I lost a bit through sweat.  I also replaced some of that with a nice 8 ounce glass of water.  Let's call it even.

Folks, that's not much progress for 11 days of training.  According to the scale, this is a paltry 2.6 pounds.  Normally, we would expect 5.5 pounds of progress by this point.  On the face of it, it looks like I am making poor progress.  Perhaps the new fruits and nuts are retarding my weight loss and hence my progress towards the goal?

Or can it be that I have put on 2.9 pounds of muscle mass?  I swear I feel stronger than I have in months, and I can feel more muscle on the bone. Further, the last time I experienced such a plateau, I made historic gains in lean weight.  That was a very good Bod Pod day indeed.  I was pleased with my results on that day.  Lord knows I have wanted to put on more lean mass.  I would welcome more results like those.

I am betting that my evening swims are cutting the fat weight and adding new muscle.  Swimming stresses muscles that are seldom used in other forms of exercise.  The cold water of the evening pool places thermogenic stress on every human body.

This is one of the key points about swimming most people don't understand.  We are warm-blooded animals.  We are biologically programmed to maintain homeostasis at 98.6 degrees F.  Some of us are better at this than others.  As rule, men are better at self-heating than women.  When you immerse yourself in cold water, you force your metabolism to burn much larger amounts of energy just to maintain body temperature.  This is before any consideration of actual swimming exercise you do in the pool.  This type of exercise is extremely effective at burning fat.  Brown fat cells consume energy from white cells in order to generate heat.

Presuming that I am correct, and I have lost my normal 5.5 pounds of fat, whilst gaining 2.9 pounds of lean, this means my current body fat percentage is 22.361%,:  150.721 pounds of lean, 43.41 pounds of fat, 194.131 total pounds.  This would indicate that I have already reduced my BFP 2.539% during this cycle.  If so, it's a big credit to the swimming regime.

Bod Pod XI is scheduled for Friday morning at 9:00am.  I am returning to my normally scheduled appointment time.  This means I have only 13 days in this cycle.  This should normally mean lesser results, but I am optimistic.