I thought it might be interesting to share my stats at the start of marathon training, and see if they change at all over time. I don't intend to share progress on these at all regularly, as I'm not too fussed as long as my running distance or pace are improving. But anyway...


Weight

I know from enough past experience that a good weight for me, where I feel healthy and happy and have energy, is 11 st. Currently I fluctuate between 12 stone 6 and 12 stone 10, so the above is actually quite optimistic. Essentially I've put on 1.5 stone during lockdown, which is obviously more weight I'm lugging around while running. 

BMI

Body Mass Index is largely recognised as being a bit crap these days, so I can ignore that mine's 25.6, which means I'm (just) overweight! 

%Body Fat

If I was going to overly worry about any of these, then % Body fat would be the one I'd worry about. These are the body fat percentage guides on https://www.active.com/fitness/calculators/bodyfat:

So currently I'm in the "Acceptable" level but nowhere near the "fitness" level, and I'd love to be in the "athletes" level. This also determines which parts of me wobble and how much, so I'd love to see this decrease.

The problem is that a) it takes a lot of work, b) a strict diet, and c) more exercises to build muscle than  just running. It's also not healthy to bring this down more than a couple of percent every month, so it's quite tough to improve.

%Hydration

According to Healthline.com your Body Water Percentage decreases with age.


My percentage of 54.3% is therefore pretty normal, and fluctuates throughout the day. The same article says that the amount you drink per day can be worked out by taking your weight in pounds (for me that's 175), dividing by two (87.5) and drinking that much in fluid ounces (technically US fluid ounces but it's an estimate anyway so we'll ignore that). You should also add another 12 ounces per half hour of exercise.  So on the average day with a half hour run I should be drinking 99.5 fluid ounces of water, approximately 5 pints.

%Muscle

Again according to Healthline.com (I'd never heard of this site before today by the way, it's just what came up on google), your muscle mass as a percentage of body weight decreases with age.


And again I'm pretty much average here at 41%. Maybe even slightly above although I can't imagine where these muscles are!

%Bone

These are getting a bit silly now I think. Bone mass apparently is usually between 3 and 5% but can decrease with old age.

BMR

This is my Basal Metabolic Rate. It's nothing too clever. It's just a formula using my weight and height to determining how many calories my body burns if I just sit all day and do no exercise. Essentially if I want to lose any weight then I need to eat fewer calories each day than this figure (1815). I currently aim for 1500 so that's not an issue.

AMR

This is my active metabolic rate, basically it's the BMR plus whatever calories they reckon I'll burn from whatever exercise I told it. (I've just checked the app and I told it I did "Moderate activity". Personally I like to track how many calories I've actually burned from activity each day, so I can ignore this.

Waist Size

I've added this one to the end, because my clothes don't fit. My current Waist size is 36 inches. I need to either get this down or find new clothes!

I might revisit this in three months and see whether anything's changed.