The Body That PopTarts Built

Today is Day 4 of my CrossFit gym's six-week challenge. They started by calling it a "nutrition challenge," then switched to simply "challenge" because they're also incorporating factors such as workouts and sleep.

I, however, like to refer to it as my "Stop Eating Like a Ten-Year-Old" challenge.

So as of Monday I said goodbye--at least temporarily--to poptarts, Diet Dew, cookies, cinnamon rolls, peanut butter, and McDonald's. In the challenge, we can get points for eating either Paleo, or Zone, or both.  I know a fair bit about Paleo, but knew nothing about Zone.   After briefly investigating the Zone--and being turned off by the low calorie level and by the fact that the Zone website's "calculator" decided, based on my weight and measurements, that I was 32% body fat and obese--I decided Paleo it is.  The main thing I know about Paleo is that, if you make a list of all the things that you're supposed to avoid on Paleo, and then make a list of all my favorite things, the lists are the same. It's going to be an interesting six weeks.

At least it started off on a good note, though.  One of the things included in the challenge is "Bod Pod" body composition measurement...in other words, body fat measurement.  Since I'd had my body fat measured in 2004, when I had just turned 41 (using the highly accurate but highly unpleasant underwater method), I thought it would be cool to see how I was doing almost 10 years later.  I would undoubtedly have been less enthusiastic had I not recently lost the 15 pounds I gained last year, but now, at what is a relatively "normal" weight for me, I was keen to check it out.

The Bod Pod, once I finally located it in the "Wellness Center" of our local University, turned out to be a little white egg-shaped container with, mercifully for us claustrophobes, a window. Compared to the underwater weighing, the Bod Pod was a piece of cake (Paleo cake, of course.)  All I had to do was sit in it for about a minute, and then I was presented with my results.

18.6% body fat, just .7% more than when I was 41, and with almost six more pounds of "lean body weight" now (I'm assuming this is muscle, since I don't think I've grown any additional bones or eyeballs or anything in the past nine years).  This information nicely answered the question "how much of the weight I've put on since 2004 is actually muscle?" with "some, but not all."  So there's still room for improvement, but in general I'm pretty happy with the current state of things.

So then I had the Hubster take some "before" photos, so I'll have some visual data to go along with my Bod Pod information.  No, you're not going to get to see them.  Mostly, I want to see if I can detect any upper-body muscle change in six weeks.  I definitely see more muscle now than I did pre-CrossFit, but I'm curious to see if there's any change during the next six weeks when, once the skating season ends March 2, I can do a bit more CrossFit than I do during the racing season.

Anyway, now I have a complete picture of "The Body That PopTarts Built."  Let's see if and how it differs, in six weeks, from "The Body That Paleo Built."