Milestones

Mirriam-Webster defines milestone as "an important point in the progress or development of something : a very important event or advance". What's this got to do with me? Two things really.

First, as I have mentioned in my blog, I recently underwent some surgery as part of my total orthodontic treatment. That has left me with some residual pain and more discomforting - some numbness in my chin and lower lip (some might say in my skull... ;). This numbness was causing some pretty serious discomfort if I put in any strong effort while riding my bike on the trainer.

Last tuesday, I decided to push myself a little harder than I had been (on the trainer). It didn't take long for this discomfort to cause me to make the decision to let up and scale back the intensity. I just wasn't ready for it. It really makes my face feel like it is starting to swell up pretty badly.

Two days later, while again taking a trainer class from Jeni (www.roadwaves.net), I decided to push it again. This time, the discomfort didn't manifest itself in the same way, and in fact seemed to be a bit reduced. I was able to keep up the intensity for the entire hour and 20 minutes of the trainer class. That was a big deal for me as I really don't want to be too far behind in my fitness and my training once the spring riding season begins in just a couple of months.

The second milestone - that's a much bigger deal for me. This has to do with my big goal for the year. That being of course to change my body composition. If you have been following along, you know that I am tracking my weight and by % body fat. Today marks the 10th consecutive day that my 7 day average weight has been below 170 lbs. That, for me, is a very significant number.

Why is it so significant? Well, I haven't seen that number on a scale for a long time. Probably the last time I saw a weight below this number on a scale was when I was in the Military. I got out of the Military (about) 24 years ago. It is a big deal for me.

Of course, my jaw surgery and the diet I'm forced to be on has helped, but interestingly enough, I really have only lost 5 lbs before my weight stabilized. You'll see it in the chart I'll post at the end of the blog. It was the first few days after the surgery that I had a significant drop in my weight. Since then, as I have already said, it has been 10 days that my 7 day average has been below 170.

Now I have to keep that up, especially once I can go back to a more 'normal' diet.

Something else I should comment on. My last blog talked about how I switched my scale to the 'athlete' mode for measuring % body fat. Well, as you might imagine, the numbers changed radically. It immediately went from an average of 25 to an average of 20.2. the % stayed at 20.2 and has varied only slightly since I made that change almost 2 weeks ago. One thing I really like about this setting - it seems to have less variance in the day to day measurement. Perhaps that has something to do with my diet, but I don't really know.

So, my numbers (7 day avg) as they fall out today are: 168.5 lbs and 20.1% body fat.

And, since it has been a few weeks since I made the body measurements, here they are as of this afternoon (baseline measurements in parenthesis) :
Chest: 40.625 (43.625) inches
Waist: 36.75 (38.5) inches
Hips: 38.625 (40.0) inches
Thighs: L: 22.625 (23.875) R: 22.5 (24.0) inches
Calves*: L: 16.125 (16.125) R: 16 (16.375) inches

*still not too sure about my calf measurements. I'll keep on posting them, but I'll have to keep an asterisk on that measurement until I have more confidence. Maybe I should just get a tattoo around my calf at the measurement point...

Total inches lost: 8.9

So, here's the screen shot.