I, more or less, accepted this fact a week ago. My lowest sustainable body weight as an adult was 192 pounds. This occurred between the ages of 22-24 during my Army years. I am very close to that point now, but back then I didn't have as much muscle tissue, loose skin, or as many chronic injuries. I had less of all three. The loose skin and muscle count as lean. The chronic injuries don't show up on the scale.
I modified my workouts tremendously in the past week. I did my first CrossFit training session last Sunday. I will do my second in about an hour. I did three sessions of heavy weigh lifting with my USC linebacker buddy, Aaron Graham. In the meantime, I still managed to rip a few ROM workouts and continue burning over 1,000 kcal per day. Consider my workout journal entries from yesterday:
10/21/2011
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Machine
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Minutes
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KCAL
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Distance
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1
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Bike
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11
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130
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3.8
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2
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Elliptical
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24
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385
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2.68
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3
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Club Elliptical
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12
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226
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0.65
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4
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Rower
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12
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146.5
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1.55
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5
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Tread
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12
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156
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0.85
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6
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7
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8
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71
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1,043.50
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9.53
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The first two items were accomplished before work in the morning. The next three were done at lunch before 1:00pm. By 1:00pm in the afternoon I had already scratched out 71 minutes and 1,043.5 kcal.
It's astounding to me that such effort does not produce sizable weight loss. The clear and present fact is that it has not produced weight loss results. If I had been able to do this sort of work in March of 2011, the fat would have flown off my bones. As you can see, the average intensity is very high. I burned an average of 14.69 kcal per minute (above RMR) during the course of this workout. That's pretty hard, buddy.
Of course, my hope is that my body composition is changing under the hood. I am hoping that fat is being burned, and new lean is growing. Of course, this has usually been my hope, and it usually has not been fulfilled. Of course, I have not been training in the fashion I have this week.
Bod Pod XIII will be more interesting than usual. This will be the first Bod Pod to show the point of inflection. I fully expect my body weight to be higher this time than last. There is a 0% chance I will be lower than 190 on this next test. Rather, I will be at least 4 pounds higher. I am just hoping that my fat weight comes in below 40 pounds. If it does, this will be a significant victory. This would necessarily mean that my lean weight has increased, and I have made progress on the BFP front.
It should be noted that the term point of inflection comes from differential calculus. It is the point on a curve where the trajectory changes signs (from positive to negative or negative to positive).
I totally hit that point a week or so ago. Now phase I of the body remake story is over. It's not about weight loss anymore. Now the story changes. The story is now about body building and lean muscle mass. It's about going to an elite level of fitness, not just a good level of fitness.
The moral of this story is clear: There are absolute limits. Even after a weight loss surgery as drastic as Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, there are points you body won't go beyond without further medical intervention. I seem to be up against one of those limits right now.
