| MVE: Conclusion- Part 3: My Physical Changes |
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| Wednesday, 08 July 2009 17:14 | |||
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Two weeks before starting my Vegan Experiment I weighed myself and took skin-fold measurements to get my approximate body fat level. I'm not the kind of person to use a scale regularly. I feel there are far better ways of gauging fitness progress than daily or weekly weigh-ins. But in order to determine whether I was losing fat or muscle it was necessary to step on the scale. I also calculated my body mass index on the first of June so I could include any changes to that number. I was classified as overweight. No surprise.Nine days into the experiment I retested my body composition and reweighed myself. My weight had already dropped 3 pounds, but my percentages of lean body mass versus fat mass were unchanged. So after just a little over one week I lost about 2.5 pounds of lean mass and less than a half pound of fat. On the 1st of July I retested and reweighed again. During the 30 day experiment I lost a total of 11 pounds, but my fat percentage dropped only 1.8%. In one month I lost 6.7 pounds of lean mass and 3.97 pounds of fat. Based on the poor performance during my leg workouts, I think most of the muscle lost came from my thighs and glutes. I wondered if I continued eating the strict vegan diet if my rate of fat loss would have continued to increase to the point of surpassing the loss of lean mass. But since I did not start this experiment needing to lose 11 pounds (or any, in my opinion) I had no desire to continue to find the answer. Add that some people were starting to tell me that I looked like I was losing weight, and my strength was declining on some exercises, I was ready to stop. As for the body mass index, I was once again in a "normal weight" classification, something that hasn't happened since graduating boot camp where I lost over 30 pounds( almost all of which was muscle.)
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