New goal

I saw a personal trainer yesterday afternoon to do a fitness assessment. I explained to her that I'd lost a lot of weight and I wanted to figure out what my goal should be based on my body fat percentage. She was very complimentary. She insisted that I didn't need to lose any more weight. She said my legs are toned, my stomach is flat, and I look great. Then she got out the calipers and filled in the chart. And then she said "Huh. Usually I'm really good at guessing what this will be." My body fat percentage is 26%. This seems be a common theme, I'm fatter than I look.

A while ago I was digging through some paperwork and found a fitness assessment from 10 years ago. I was about the same weight but back then my body fat percentage was 29%. I remember that personal trainer was surprised, too.

So, here's my new goal. If my body fat percentage is 26% and I'm 140 pounds that means I have 103.6 pounds that isn't fat. If I want to be 20% body fat then .2x = x - 103.6 and I should weigh 129.5. That's pretty close to what Self magazine thought was my happy weight. I guess a good timeframe would be to try to get to that weight before we go to California in January, a pound/week seems to be realistic.

I also just bought a digital caliper which is what the trainer used yesterday. I have a Tanita scale which is supposed to measure body fat but it's been telling me I'm 32-33% fat every day since I started losing weight. It's possible I'm about to go very OCD with this.