To put this in perspective, here are the numbers:
| Total Weight | Percentage | Lean Mass | Fat Mass | |
| 9/17/05 | 172.0 | 12.0% | 151.4 | 20.6 |
| 8/23/14 | 171.0 | 17.5% | 141.1 | 29.9 |
I'm a pound lighter than I was 9 years ago, but the real shock comes from the body composition numbers.
I have lost 10.3 pounds of lean mass. That's not necessarily just muscle. It could also be bone and connective tissue, which are also things I don't want to lose. It's hard to say exactly where that muscle was lost since I only have sporadic measurements going back that far (to be honest, I only have the one body fat measurement from a threshold test that I did at Breakaway until I started tracking body fat in 2010). I know that my thighs were 26" then and are down to 24" now, so at least some of it came off my legs.
I also gained 9.3 pounds of fat. That's just fat. There's no good way to look at it. There is definitely more around my waist. I wear a size 34 waist now and I wore a 32 back in 2005. The 34 is snug; the 32 was loose in the waist but was required to fit my legs in them.
This winter, I'm going to start reversing that. I realize that getting more muscle won't directly make me a faster rider, but this is more of a long-term fitness and health concern.
Let me assure you, gaining muscle take a lot of hard work. It's not something that just helping your friends move one weekend or lifting small dumbbells once in a while will accomplish. A lot of people think they gained muscle because they lost some fat and exposed the muscle underneath. Believe me, they didn't. It takes a lot of very focused effort at pretty hard intensities to gain even a little muscle... and at the age of 40, it won't be any easier.
There's another funny thing to know about muscle. You can gain strength and endurance in a muscle without growing more muscle. The difference is not in size, which is what makes it all more confusing. You can gain huge amounts of strength without the muscles getting larger.
This won't be an easy process. In addition to lifting heavy, I also need a calorie surplus. Of course, it needs to be enough to build muscle but not so much that my body starts storing the extra as fat.
I can realistically gain 1/4 to 1/2 pound per week. I'll spend about 10 weeks working on gaining. During that time, I should gain substantial strength and need to maintain my aerobic fitness.
After Christmas, I'll switch back to focusing on losing fat for 12 weeks, aiming for 0.8 to 1.0 pounds per week. There's a good chance I will lose a tiny bit of muscle during that time. As long as I keep lifting, I should be able to minimize it but I still have to be careful. During that time, I'll be focused on building the strength and endurance of the new muscle while trying to build my aerobic fitness.
If I hit those numbers, I should be able to lose about 11 pounds of fat and gain 4 pounds of muscle (for a total loss of 7 pounds), putting me around 12% body fat by March.
If I can pull that off, I'll be pretty happy. It's not quite enough to replace all that I've lost, but it's certainly a step in the right direction and sets the stage for next winter (2015-2016) to continue the same process.
