Unplanned Consequences

While it's pretty obvious that one of the reasons I started P90X was to get into better shape, I never intended it to be as a weight loss program. Going into this I knew that my weight would fluctuate up and down as I lost fat and gained muscle, and I was also prepared for the inevitable loosening of my clothes. What I wasn't prepared for was when I stepped on the scale on Friday.

When visiting Muddy and the Muddettes (his wife and little girl) on Friday I was informed that we were going to our mother's house for dinner. We ventured over with all elements of the ForceTrainer/MuddyBulldog clan converging on "grandma's" house. Of course the conversation turned to working out, weight loss, and P90X [editor's note: If you don't know why this happened, please read The Path to Being a Hardbody Geek and reference the section on Be the Expert].

Our mom had just returned from visiting our froggy family in France, and she was astonished about how her "baby boys" were so skinny. This prompted Muddy to want to find his body fat percentage, so a few minutes later a fabric tape measure was produced and we're standing in the kitchen measuring his body to plug the stats into a calculator. Since the body fat estimators are shoddy at best the number that popped up didn't really matter, but it made me want to find out my approximate body fat as well. We got all of the important points measured, but I still needed to get the last vital statistic - my weight.

I actually haven't stepped on the scale since the beginning of this program. I firmly believe that weight by itself means nothing (it should only be used for body fat calculation) so I've really had no incentive to step on the scale. It would also be hard to do so since I don't even own one.

We headed upstairs to the bathroom to step on the scale. The verdict - 183. "Wait a second," I thought. "This can't be right." Since Muddy's weight was known he jumped on the scale to verify - about 195 or so (he was fully clothed). So we knew the scale was right. I moved it around to another place on the floor and stepped on it again - 183. I bounded around a bit on the scale, and the result was the same again and again - 183.

I think the words "holy shit" escaped both Muddy's and my lips. I've lost about 15 pounds in the past two months, and it was completely unplanned. The resulting body fat calculation didn't really mean much - I was just astonished that I have lost 15 pounds in the past two months. There's definitely a feeling of accomplishment when you can say, "I've dropped 15 pounds in the past two months." I find that fact amusing since I'm the one preaching that weight loss by itself doesn't mean squat. Well, I take part of that back (at least for this post). I've lost 15 pounds and feel damn good about it :) Unfortunately I have another month to go before I can take part in Prophet's trademarked Skinnyshopping™
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