Last late-summer and into the fall, I did not have a gym membership, I started mountain biking around a very hilly nature preserve near my apartment. I generally got out twice a week, and did 15-25 miles each time, depending on the weather, how much time I had, how much energy I had, etc. It didn't especially feel like heavy exercise; I was leg weary but seldom actually panting out of breath, and I only sweated heavily on hot days. As the weather turned colder I kept at it, wearing more layers and dealing with mud as necessary. During that time I lost about 15 pounds, without substantially altering my diet. In fact, I'm sure I actually ate more, since I always ate before I went out to give me energy, and was usually starving when I finished a 2 hour ride.
I wasn't actually overweight to begin with, since I had above average muscle tone, but
my BMI went from around 24.5 to 22.3, which is theoretically an improvement. This despite the fact that my thighs got way bigger from all the muscle in the hams and quads. I didn't measure or anything, but the difference was visually evident.
The weight loss surprised me, since I was only doing it once or twice a week, plus the semi-workout I get from martial arts class once a week. I'd never been able to lose that kind of weight going to the gym, and then I was trying to lose weight. Of course I was gaining muscle from weight lifting, while losing fat from that and cardio, which made a simple BMI calculation useless.
I've been doing a lot of weights again during the past 6 weeks since I joined a gym again, and it's made an evident difference already, in my upper body and arms. My weight has gone nowhere, though. It's stayed right around 165, up about 5 pounds from where it was in the fall before bad weather cut back on my bike riding. So clearly I'm losing fat and replacing it with muscle, and they say muscle weighs more since it's denser, but I do a damn lot of cardio too. I usually hit the elliptical machine for 45 minutes when I first get there, and often for another 15 or 20 before I leave. I go hard too, with the resistance up pretty far. I sweat nonstop, just running down my face, though it's not enough to get me out of breath unless I put on a sprint or do one of the mountain climbing programs, where the resistance spikes every few minutes. Plus I use the arm levers as well as the legs (the first few times back at the gym in January my arms were dying, since my legs were strong from biking but I hadn't been doing weights for upper body) to get more of a workout. But I don't lose weight from that, even though it feels like I'm doing
way more effort/work than I do biking.
I say this not to brag or anything, but because the weight loss issues confuse me. Apparently the trick to losing weight is to do medium exertion, with some sprinting spikes, for like 2 hours at a time. I lost far more weight bike riding 2 days a week than I ever have from any type of gym workout, even going every day and working myself to exhaustion. Even though the bike isn't always a strain, isn't doing anything for my upper body, has up and down hills, etc. I've been tempted to try to emulate that at the gym, and just go like 100 minute sessions on the elliptical to see what that does to my weight and tone, but I get so bored after 30 minutes that even making it 45 is a stretch, and that's with fun mashups on my ipod and bad movies on the overhead TVs. Maybe a video ipod with a new movie each day would get me through?
The one advantage (or is it a penalty?) of the gym is the much lower likelihood of returning home looking like this. Muddy, yes. But note the big post-splash, post-slide-out-crash smile?
The one odd thing I've noticed about the gym lately is the mystery weight loss. I've taken to weighing myself on the locker room scale when I arrive; I stand on it with my ipod on and a full water bottle in my hand, and when I leave a 90 or 100 minutes later, I weigh 4-6 pounds less. So where does the weight go? I'm not peeing it out, and sure, I'm dripping sweat the whole time, and wiping it off with a towel, but there's no way I lose 2kg of sweat, when most of it just absorbs into my clothing. If I were weighing myself naked, (as a disturbing number of flabby, fish belly-white, 50 y/os do in that locker room) I'd understand. But I'm still fully-dressed, and I've simply transferred the water from the bottle into my tummy. So where does the weight go?
I guess it's mostly water vapor? I exhale constantly, it evaporates from my head and through my clothing, and that's why the windows are always steamed up at the gym at night. I also find it kind of disturbing that I'm regaining 7 or 8 or 10 pounds of liquid every day between gym visits, but I guess that's the price I pay for not weighing what I drink and what I pee and tabulating the difference.
Labels: fitness
