It’s pretty obvious that health is not just about weighing less, or even changing your body mass index and body fat percentages. Since I started biking my weight loss has slowed by about half compared to when I was doing less exercise because of overdoing it and then having to take lots of recovery days. I also had almost nothing but gaucomole for an entire month. Those factors combined to help me drop a lot of weight, but I now feel like my fitness didn’t improve as much as it has in the month following.
March has been the month of Zwift! The changes to my body are astouding already, inside and out. My legs are becoming tree trunks again, a long way from when I was competitive, but the infectious nature of standing up and sprinting up a hill or to a checkpoint has done its magic. Sure it hurts, but it is so fun. It’s always fun to recognize strength gains like these in random ways, like when just picking something heavy up, or bounding up the apartment stairs. In a way it angers me that I lost that feeling and ability. Never again!
I also don’t get nearly as tired. I have so much more energy now, even though I ride in Zwift for about 2.5 hours every single day, as soon as I stop my heart rate recovers almost instantly and I could go out shopping for a few hours if I needed to. It is insane. I spend most of my time in zone 2 so there is still muscle glycogen to spare by the end, even after 2.5 hours. The main obstacle is simply comfort and chafing from being on the bike that long.
Another major difference from last month is that I get more sleep so I can recover — especially after a hard ride. That reduces the number of calories I burn during the regular day which slows weight loss, but comes with much better fitness benefits.
I recently read someone summarizing a scientific paper about loss of collagen in the skin as we age and how to recover loose skin during weight loss. I was intested to see if my obesity had passed into the needs-surgery-to-remove-skin stage. Thankfully, it looks like I was just on the edge of it. One thing noted in the study is that the slower the weight loss, the better the skin is able to adapt and tighten. That is another solid reason to be okay with about 1 kilo weight loss per week. The paper also said that weight training improves the skin as well by tighting the connective tissues underneath. And the most important factor, was eating healthy foods and getting enough water and avoiding too much sun exposure. In short, having the healthiest, tightest skin possible is easily worth reducing the amount of weight I lose per week — especially if I am inceasing fitness dramatically even without the same weight loss.
So I’m committed to getting in the best cardio shape I possibly can, with increases in strength as they come, and then dealing with whatever rate that weight comes off. And don’t let any muscle-bound, cross-fit asshole tell you cardio is “bad for you.” It’s completely and totally unscientific to say that. There is great science confirming (as always) that the most important aspect of general health going into old age is cardio-vascular fitness. It is true that having muscle tone is important since it is harder to maintain as well, but it is a very distant second in priority over base cardio fitness and weight management. It makes me mad that so many people are spewing that stupidity all over the Internet.