Earlier this week, I was obsessing a bit over my body fat percentage reading.

You all left awesome comments, so thank you for that. 

Meghan wins for best comment, though. She told me that there was an athlete mode on the body fat machine AND she told me about the Racing Weight book, which I immediately downloaded. 

I was curious, too, what the athlete mode means. According to Tanita, a scale manufacturer:

Q: Why is there an “Athlete Mode”? 
A: The Athlete mode was developed to provide a more accurate reading for athletic body types. Athletic body types are physiologically different than standard adult body types, due to muscle mass and hydration level differences. Athletes tend to have greater muscle mass and tend to be more dehydrated. These differences would skew the body fat reading high, when taken with the standard Adult mode.

• Tanita defines “athlete” as a person involved in intense physical activity of approximately 10 hours per week and who has a resting heart rate of approximately 60 beats per minute or less.
• Tanita’s athlete definition includes “lifetime of fitness” individuals who have been fit for years but currently exercise less than 10 hours per week. Tanita’s athlete definition does not include “enthusiastic beginners” who are making a real commitment to exercising at least 10 hours per week but whose bodies have not yet changed to require the Athlete mode.

I don’t fit the 10 hours per week right now (and probably only fit that when marathon training, and barely), but I can get behind the rest of it.

I’m just a few chapters into the Racing Weight book so far, but I’m really enjoying it, because it focuses on how to fuel your body for running or endurance sports and be as lean as possible. He developed a Diet Quality Score system, which scores each food to give you a score at the end of the day. Foods are classified as either high quality or low quality. You earn points for the high quality foods and subtract for low-quality foods. I despise counting calories with the fire of a thousand suns, so this seems like an interesting way to better monitor what I’m eating, and also to compete against myself a bit, much like I do with my FitBit.

I also spoke with Michelle, our coach for this challenge. She reminded me not to obsess over this reading, that it was just one measure of health. She checked on their body fat thingy, and they do have an athlete mode, so we’re going to try that as well as calipers and take the average. Whether that figure was accurate or not, I guess it gives me a good starting point for this challenge.

Last night, Michelle and I were texting. I told her I was going out to dinner and drinks for Laura’s going away party and my goal was to not have more than 4 drinks over the course of the night; 2 at dinner, 2 at the party after. She suggested if I did go over my goal, that I should plan on an extra 10 minutes of exercise for each drink. Over 6 hours, I ended up having 7 drinks. Since that was roughly a drink an hour, I never felt more than a little tipsy, but I managed to drink an extra 700 calories (at least.) It’s kind of gross when you think of it like that. So, I’m going to run 7 miles today.

Also, this post needs a picture so here is one from Laura’s party last night. Leaving NYC is dumb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, this is happening. (It’s technically not ING any more, but whatever.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On New Year’s, Gia mentioned she was going to do the Miami Half in the beginning of February and asked if I wanted to go. 

When the Polar Vortex hit NYC this week, I decided that yes, yes, I did want to go to Florida in February, thankyouverymuch, and booked a ticket.

Have any of you done it? Do you have any fun trips lined up? Let me live vicariously through you.