Twenty!

These two plates represent my weight loss since December 3.  Imagine throwing these into a pack and going to do the Incline or a run and you can see just how significant of a loss it is! 

I did it!  I am officially down 20 pounds from December 3rd when I started my Leadman training and my Paleo diet.  Twenty pounds...

To be exact it is 20.6 pounds but who is counting, right?

This is the lightest I have been in as long as I can remember and it is exciting.  I am pleasantly pleased at how little body fat I have left and just how lean I have gotten over the past couple of months.

Has it been easy?  No... but at the same time yes.  Easy because for once I finally made the association in my brain that  in order to not gain weight or more importantly lose it, the quality of the food that I eat daily is actually more important than the quantity. Calories are not all equal, period.

Of course, nothing is more motivating for success than success itself.  The gains (or losses in this example) just motivate me to keep going on and reinforces my dedication to this process.  This is different than in the past because typically cutting weight has always been a tough proposition and even more so if I am struggling and the weight is not coming off.  That is when I typically would say screw it, hit the donut shop and drink a case of sodas and write it off to not working out enough.  WRONG!

But this isn't just a 2013 thing or a running thing.  This is a lifetime thing.  I feel very fortunate to have been able to arrest the cycle that I have been in for years and lose the body fat that had been plaguing me.  More importantly I have shed the visceral (internal / around the vital organs) fat that poses the most health risks and lends itself to liver and heart disease and is also a possible precursor to diabetes.

I've had a few slips... some cheat days but I have been well over 90% Paleo since December 3rd.  My training volume has not been anything super heavy so I can't attribute the weight loss to just that.  It just comes down to what I eat and how I eat.  Lesson learned!

As an added bonus, yesterday I started to mix some very light, and I mean light weight lifting into my daily workout regime.  When I say light, I mean light enough to not gain any bulk and light enough to not get hurt either.  I will keep that up through the year as well.  I don't want to lose much more weight and I want to ensure that I do maintain lean mass as much as possible, plus there are many hormonal and biochemical benefits to weight bearing exercise that I can benefit from training the next few months.

I doubt I will EVER be this light and I know I will never be as fast I was then but damned if I am not maybe getting close.  Bernkastle - Traben Trabach Half Marathon, West Germany, 1988.