On my ride yesterday, I found myself pedaling in the drops into the wind a little on my way home to Nimes and noticed that my knees were only slapping my gut gently, whereas a few months ago they would be giving it a good pounding. This is my tried and true gauge of where I’m at in my yearly (or since Covid – constant) weight loss plan.

Then I got to thinking about how and where I do lose weight, usually eventually. It comes off discretely from all over the body, but I really see and feel it from the abdominal region. It turns out that there are two places that fat finds a resting spot here: subcutaneously and viscerally. We all have both, but some people tend to have more of one than the other.

The classic beer drinker with a Molson muscle (look it up if you’re not Canadian) is a person who has a lot of visceral fat – you can definitely see it, but you can’t necessarily pinch an inch. The equally well-known spare tire is an example of subcutaneous fat – it’s flabby and pinchable. I have both right now and it is impossible to conceal with tight lycra, but happily they are both disappearing slowly and hopefully surely.

But back to my bulge; what’s causing my mid section to get in the way of my upstroke is mainly visceral fat, which is fat that is around your organs. Apparently, this stuff is not great for your health. It may be linked to heart disease, diabetes, stroke and more stuff we don’t want to happen to us. The worst part is that it’s hidden and you can’t measure it without a scan of some sort, so the good old measuring tape comes in handy here, as well as the crude-but-still-employed BMI. I guess the scales would tell a tale as well.

And now I have to run and get my morning ride in because I accidentally had one too many pints yesterday (that is, anything over 1 these days). I’ll be staying out of the drops to keep up the moral.