Henry's Web Log

Lisa and I made a promise before I left: we'd each try to loose 10 pounds. I've got a lot more than she does to loose, and I've gotten right to work on it.
One of our briefings on "battle mind" (or as a football coach would say, "getting your head into the game") was about coming back as a 300. It's your choice whether that's a 300 on your PT test (perfect score on Army Physical Fitness), or 300 pounds. Because there's considerable discretionary time, and lots of really good food. See an online calculator for the Army's PT test
So I'm working on my weight goal, and hopefully improving my PT score in the process. I started at 226 pounds on October 5th. I was within Army standards, but have to be body-fat measured. My goal is to be below the screening weight for body-fat testing ("tape test" - because they measure your girth and use various look-up tables to guesstimate your body fat percentage). So my goal is under 214 pounds. Right now, I'm 218! I was pretty frustrated last month as I was eating right, exercising more than most of my peers, and still not loosing anything. Well, I took a dramatic step last week: I stopped all caffeine and artificial sweetners. No Diet Coke, my favorite beverage! And within a week, about 4 pounds have come right off.

I want to stress that this is all self-imposed. The Army is really not enforcing body-fat except in extreme cases right now: seeing as how they're calling us old Individual Ready Reserve folks out of the woodwork. In fact, I'll go so far as to confess that no one has given us a physical fitness test or tape-test since we re-entered active duty. I do know they looked at this in the medical fitness review, but it wasn't a very close look!

I'm pretty excited about my progress, though, and I look forward to the benefits of dropping this extra weight: faster run times, easier to do push-ups, less stress on my knees, and above all, looking good for my Lisa!