Last week I talked about my power target for next summer, which is the "watts" part of "watts per kilogram." This week, it's the weight target (which cyclists love to track in kilograms, but I'll keep it in pounds for this post).
I'd hate to say that the weight target will be easier because that almost invites disaster, but I do feel that the weight I need to lose to meet the goal is less challenging than hitting the power target.
I'm currently at 175.4... but let's talk about how I get that number first.
Everyone worries about how much more they weight after a huge meal at night or about being dehydrating after a massive day of riding. I let it all average out.
I weigh myself first thing in the morning, right after I go to the bathroom. I have a Tanita body fat monitor, so I log weight and body fat every day into a spreadsheet. I have a formula in the spreadsheet that averages all the numbers together every week, giving me a 7-day average of weight and body fat.
I use those averages for everything: that's what I track to see how I'm progressing in weight loss, that's what I put into WKO to get my watt/kilogram numbers, and that's how I keep an eye on my body composition to make sure my body fat is dropping (hopefully I'm not losing lean mass).
It's a little crazy but it takes all the little daily variations out of the discussion and it gets me in the habit of logging every single day and not saying "oh, I don't like today's number so I won't log it."
It also avoids the weirdness around weighing in once a week. If you had a big salty dinner with lots to drink the night before, that one day's number will be high and it's just human nature to feel like a failure and either try to figure out what went wrong or just feel demotivated... when the number isn't correct anyway. Getting an average smooths all that out and lets you see the trend, not just one day's hiccup.
So, with all that said, my current weight is 175.4 for the week. My goal for the race in June is to be 164.0 pounds (or lower). Losing 11.3 pounds in 10 months shouldn't be a problem, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't take it seriously.
With my rather massive requirements to increase my power output, I can't let my body get into a state of major calorie deficit. I have to take the weight loss slowly so I don't sabotage the power gains.
Ideally, I will lose 2 to 3 pounds a month for the next 4 months. If I can lose 8 to 10 pounds in those 4 months, I will call that a success. That would put me around 165 to 168 pounds by the start of 2016, leaving me between 1 and 4 pounds to lose over the following 5 months. More importantly, it gives me 5 months where I can focus solely on power gains and not worry about weight loss.
With only 11 pounds to lose in 10 months, it's easy to blow it off and worry about it later, but worrying about it later is a good way to not meet a goal!
