Goals & Weight

In an old post, I think I talked about some of my fun fitness goals now that my weight and body composition is more or less where I want it. Josh Hillis talks about how women can strive for a certain weight or fat percentage for so long that when they actually achieve it it's hard to be done. The temptation is to keep going: to get leaner and leaner.

But unless you are literally a world class athlete or a woman in active preparation for a body building competition, there is very little reason to maintain a sub-16ish% body fat percentage (and for most of us, very little hope of that anyway). Josh says, and I'm paraphrasing here, that below about 17% body fat, most women will start to lose their "womanliness." This is where your personal ethicist come into play. I like a sporty, well muscled look on me and on women in general, but hold short of liking that ultra lean body builder look. I should note that I also don't really care for the willowy distance runner look, but that doesn't mean I don't covet the skills of both the body builder and the marathoner.

Whatever your personal ideal "look" is, once you've gotten down to a healthy, strong body composition and have maintained that for awhile, what's next? Unless you are going into competition, most women are not well served by trying to strip off every bit of body fat, but if you've caught the fitness bug you still want to keep pushing yourself.

And this is when it gets fun. When you're not thinking about how your diet and exercise will effect how you look and you start thinking in terms of what you can do with your body. Small successes build confidence and allow you to try things that you never imagined possible. My first small step into athleticism was a very intro-level pilates class at the rec center. Now I'm eagerly scanning MultiSport Washington for Sprint and International Distance Tris and even contemplating things I've sworn million times I'd never do: marathons, IM distance tris, long distance open water swimming....

In the gym my goals have changed too. I don't care if I ever weigh 150 pounds. Honestly, at this point I wouldn't want to lose the muscle mass to make it happen. I do know I want to be able to perform 10 strict pull-ups and 10 kip pull-ups. I'm working on single-arm push-ups and handstand push-up. I want to squat my body weight (155 lb.--I'm at a 135# squat, so this is definitely in sight) and deadlift 1.5x times my bodyweight. Way out there--way, way out on the horizon--I'm wondering if one day I might be able to do a single muscle up.

I don't always know what fitness or life obsession I'm going to fall into next, but I do know that when you start setting goals to push yourself instead of a goal to shrink yourself, fitness gets a hell of a lot more fun.