I rummaged through my old documents and found my old measurements tracker spreadsheet with this graph. I think you can click the graph to make it bigger.


I followed the Zone diet from the beginning. The sharp dip in body fat beginning 7/01 was due to an increase in weight training. I met my (now) hubby in 9/01 - more eating out, less working out! However, I was still doing pretty good. My hubby was so impressed with me that he started following my diet plan, which is why he's on the graph, too. However, once he got down to 10% he was satisfied and started eating whatever he wanted - which led me to abandon my eating habits and mow down some Cheeto's with him! LOL Now we both need to get back in shape!

When I have enough data points on my new plan I plan to post it.

congrats! thanks for sharing!!! great accomplishment!!!

how did you measure your body fat? what was your specific diet and exercise routine?

From January through July on the chart, it was typically 1 hour on the elliptical (about 80-85% max HR), 3X per week, followed by one set of weights (12-15 reps) for all major muscle groups.

Beginning in July, I increased my weights to 2 sets of 15-20, really trying to max myself out. I also increased the number of machines I was using because I realized I had been neglecting some muscle groups. I continued cardio training on the elliptical @ 80% MHR for about an hour. Still doing this about 3X per week.

I hope the graph demonstrates how effective weight training can be!

I measured body fat with a tape measure around my abdomen (around belly button, not natural waist) and hips using the body fat calculator found in the back of the book The Zone by Dr. Barry Sears. I was also professionally tested at the gym about 5 times during the course of that graph and the professional results were always within about .5% of the tape measure results. A couple of times it was dead on, within 0.1%.

My specific diet, as I have explained in other threads, was the Zone diet that controls blood sugar, insulin levels, and hunger primarily by replacing high glycemic index carbs with low GI ones, and have adequate protein and fat intake. Dr. Sears has several Zone books out that explain the science behind it, as well as a couple of websites. (www.DrSears.com and www.ZoneDiet.com)

The main target for the diet is to increase wellness, not weight loss. But in my case I'm overfat anyway, so fat loss is a result of keeping your hormones balanced through the diet.

thanks again!!!

how often did you weight train?

you should feel great and great that you are in it again!!

I weight trained 3X per week

Here are my actual measurements:

wow-thats awesome!! now, what happened to your weight?? up, down or the same?
whats interesting is that all of your measurements went down which would be b/c of your body fat loss but would you want any of your measurements to go up due to muscle gain?? thats where measurements confuse me.

thanks for sharing!!

I did gain a bit of muscle, less than 10 lbs. I lost around 40 lbs total.

Yeah, the tape measure might not be the most accurate if you have an unusual amount of muscle. I tend to be able to gain a lot of muscle in my thighs, but luckily the body fat measurement locations don't include my thighs! Maybe that's why you only measure your waist or abdomen and hips - they wouldn't change too much with added muscle?

why wouldnt they change with added muscle?

anyway, great job!! thanks again for sharing.

what have you done b/w the time you stopped and now?

I don't know... I'm just guessing. I'm thinking about ripped guys and the waist area always seems normal size.

What have I done between then and now? Graduated college, got a good job, got married, and GOT FAT! I seriously haven't tried to eat well at all in the last three years, and forget any kind of regular exercise.

What's the formula you used to determine body fat? I've been debating buying one of the scales that does it sort of, but it's interesting that you say it was very close to what you were getting at the gym. I have a measuring tape and it would definitely be nicer to my wallet if I didn't need to replace my current scale

I don't know the formula; there is a set of tables in the back of the book I mentioned where you can look up numbers for your abdomen and hip sizes and subtract it from your height in inches.

There is an online calculator version of this on Dr. Sears' website:
http://www.drsears.com/ZoneResources/BodyFatCalcul ator/tabid/414/Default.aspx

Make sure you don't pull the tape too tightly - you don't want to compress the skin. You want the tape loose enough that you can spin it around on your body but at the same time touch your skin all the way around.

There is also a pretty cool software I just bought called Body Tracker by Linear Software that has a tape measure function in it to calculate body fat. It was $25.

I also have a body fat scale! LOL Between the three options, the Zone calculator in the link reads the highest, and the Body Tracker reads the lowest. There is about a 3% difference between the the extremes I tend to believe the online calculator though, since it and the body fat scale are pretty close (usually within 1%). The Body Tracker software uses your natural waist, hips, and neck to calculate your body fat. I have an unusually small waist, so I think that's why the Body Tracker computation seems so low compared to the other two.

If you get a body fat scale, you'll realize the readings are all over the place. They are the highest in the morning, because you are the most dehydrated at that time. Since body fat doesn't hold a lot of water, and your body has less water than normal in the morning, the electrical resistance of your body is higher and the scale will interpret that as a higher body fat. I've read that the best time to get an accurate body fat reading is about an hour or two after a meal where you've had ample liquid to drink.

well congrats on getting married, getting a good job, and graduating college!!!

my question is if the zone is not a diet, if it is a lifestyle, why havent you been able to maintain it? (this isnt a put down-just curious)

I didn't maintain it because it does require buying healthy foods and a good bit of discipline, just like all healthy eating regimens.

I maintained my low weight within 15 lbs for over 4 years because I was still in control of what I bought at the grocery store. This was without strict adherence to the diet and no formal work out regimen. However, when we got married hubby moved to Kentucky where I had moved after college. He was unemployed for a while so he became my house husband, lol, and did most of the grocery shopping, etc. My hubby is fond of snacks, pizza rolls, etc. He would go grocery shopping and that's what he would bring home for us to eat. Obviously it was easier to just eat the crap than to start a fight every single time he went grocery shopping. And since I'm carb sensitive, eating things like that took me out of the "zone" very quickly, raised my insulin levels, and the weight began to creep up slowly. I also began to crave sweets which only made things worse. (In retrospect I know this was due to higher insulin levels - my blood work from my yearly physicals demonstrated it quite well.)

I also spiraled into a very deep depression, which I now understand is probably some part due to my eating habits and the hormonal responses to the food. Depression makes self control even harder, and once I started taking meds for it my weight started climbing even higher!

I am off all meds now, thank God! I did try to eat better while taking them but it was extremely difficult because I really didn't care that I was fat. The meds were great for stress relief and mood but no so great for self discipline! LOL

So that is the long story. The short story is that I fell short of discipline in a time of adversity, and that triggered an avalanche of poor eating choices, depression, and subsequently 60 lbs of fat that needs to be gone!

I posted somewhere a link for a spreadsheet that uses the Navy and YMCA formulas to track BF%, I'm trying to find that now...

thread.

@Jenn - on the measurements, fat will tend to take up more space than muscle, so the numbers are more likely to go down while you're adding muscle than go up if you still have a lot of fat to lose. Also, in an area like your waist, it's particularly difficult to make the # go up with adding muscle, as your abs are one large muscle that runs vertically and doesn't get extremely large. Training your obliques very hard will add size to your waist, but again it isn't like trying to increase the size of your arms or legs.

ok angie well thanks for sharing and its great that you are back and ready to change. im glad you are off all meds!! thats amazing!!! thanks again for sharing all info!

thanks dave

Neesha, the scales with body fat measurement aren't terribly accurate. I have one, and it's consistently 5-10% off (usually toward 10%) according to all the other methods I've used, including the tape measure. I only use it to track progress, because it does go down as my BF% goes down with the tape measure method. Being into research makes me really like to have more than one method telling me the same thing.

^^^ hence the reason I have three ways to measure BF.

Hey Dave, thanks for the spreadsheet. That's pretty cool how you have it set up! I think the Body Tracker software uses the same tape measure calculation, which makes my BF low compared to other methods. I have a freakishly small waist and I think it throws the BF calculation off. The other tape measure calculation uses my abdomen around the navel, like it does for men on your spreadsheet.