How to stop viewing weight loss by total weight loss.

I reported in an earlier column about my finding of weight loss and it's realtionship to my running times. One of the ideas I pushed was to not use total weigght but fat weight when judging success on the weight wars.

Here's what I've found so far in my lost weight. For the 23 pounds that I lost, 14 of those pounds came in the form of fat loss (in pounds). I don't know if everyone will have the same experience but that has been mine. Another way to look at it, is that I've gone from 24% body fat percentage down to 18.9% body fat percentage. Okay, the USOC will not be sending me an invite to represent the USA in London this summer anytime soon. But it is encouraging in my personal experiment of me.

Here's what I noticed. Back in January, I was hard press to break an 2:05 in the quarter mile. Knowing that I ran a 6:47 mile back in 2005, this was very discouraging. A 2:05 1/4 mile calculates out to a 8:35 mile, almost two minutes slower than my 2005 mark. But again, I knew I was no where close to being in shape back in Janaury.

Fast forward 8 weeks, and yesterday I completed 12 reps of 1/4 mile between 1:50-1:55 per 1/4 mile. Sure, it's only 10-15 seconds faster than January, but I went from a predicted 2:20 Half Marathon to a 1:57 Half Marathon prediction in 8 weeks! When's the last time you took 2 minutes - per mile - off of a Half Marathon? (I admit, I still have to run the Half Marathon but the tables say that it's completely doable as long as I keep up my endurance runs.)

So how do I know for sure my training is working and that fat/total weight loss is having an effect? My heart rate. As I mentioned many times, I keep track of the heart rate continually through my training to make sure I'm not only training hhard but training right.

Back in Janaury, I was hard pressed to keep my heart rate under 174 for 6 1/4 mile reps at 2:05. Yesterday, I never saw any heart reading over 170. So I know that not only am I trying at a faster speed with more endurance (repetions of the 1/4 mile) but I'm also not even reaching 90-95% of my max heart rate in doing it.

I'm still putting together all the things together that I did right (and yes even wrong) but I believe I've found a very effective way to lose fat weight while at the same time as not having my training suffer as a result of it.

More to come.


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