24 weeks of Body For Life
Today is my last day of my second 12 week Body for Life (BFL) challenge.
I completed my first one in November and immediately started a second 12 week cycle. Overall, in 24 weeks, I am down about 20 lbs (all fat). My body fat % has dropped to somewhere between 19 and 24% depending upon the tool used to measure it. I’m guessing overall I’m at about 22%. My goals for this 12 week cycle were to get under 130 lbs of scale weight (achieved!) and under or to 20% body fat (oh so close…and perhaps there if the Omron body fat analyzer is accurate). For those who want to know the math, I’ve put together a before & after spreadsheet as well.
Ideally, over the next few months I will drop a few more pounds of fat and exchange it for a few pounds of muscle. I want abs & I’d love some muscle definition on my legs. The layer of fat is still quite thick on my legs. I am hoping with all the running that I am doing that they will ultimately trim up. But I’m amazingly pleased with having lost 3.2 inches off of each thigh already. I am pondering changing up the BFL routine a bit and adding an extra day of running and losing a day of weight lifting. I am really fearful though of losing lean mass. But I am eyeing a marathon in September and some shorter races before then. I really want to try to get my mileage up, slowly and steadily. I’m all about incremental progress & injury prevention. I still buy into that fable where the tortoise beat the hare. I hope it’s true in my case. I’m still pondering specific goals for the next 12 week cycle (I do love the 12 week cycle length) but for now, tomorrow is my free day and I’m already thinking about Pizza.
Hey Cathy!
Your 24 week photos look great! You are going to have some seriously ripped abs and arms by the end of C3. 😀 From personal experience, I will say that the fat on the legs will probably be the last to go. I wish I could say I’d lost over 3″ from my thighs! My total has only reached 1″ because my quads build up nearly as fast as the fat sloughs off.
Have you talked to other BFL’ers who have trained for marathon running yet? There’s a pretty big jump in calories that you’ll eventually have to make to fuel that mileage, and a possible shift to a 50/30/20 macronutrient ratio as well if you haven’t already made the change.
Savyart, Alongoria, and Rockenmommy on the MSN BFL Women forum have trained or are currently training for marathons right now and can offer some advice if you want to pop in. I’m FrugalMissM on that board, LOL.
http://groups.msn.com/BodyForLifeWomen
Maggie
Thanks Maggie,
I have checked out that group a few times & have read through the marathon section actually. It had a lot of great information in there. I’m really torn at the moment. I like what BFL is doing for my body. Thus, I am a bit fearful of altering what clearly works for me. However, I know that to increase the mileage like I want to that I do need to change it up. For me, to date, a big experiment was to have a myoplex lite before running (because I wanted to push the distance & knew I needed the fuel) rather than the strict 1 hour afterwards in the by-the-book plan. Crazy eh? So I suspect Challenge 3 will be a series of 2 to 3 week experiments of diet & workout schedules to determine what will work for me.
Hi!
What a great transformation! You look awesome! I wish I had your legs! Good luck with your running!
~Stacey 🙂