Change of perspective

I posted this on my blog yesterday, just to serve as a future reference for myself, but I thought I might share it with others:

"Slowly but surely 'how much I can lift' is becoming more important than 'how much body fat I have at the moment'. Or to put it this way: 'what would the scale say?' is becoming less important than 'what would Mark Rippetoe say' lol.
Yesterday I ate way above the calorie limit I set for my self (I just felt like some good old huge piece of homemade bread with jam). My weight lifting session today was AWESOME. I did higher weights then before and at the end still had energy to do more. But the most amazing thing is this: when I started lifting, two and a half weeks ago, I also stated swimming in the 25m pool at the same complex. I was doing 25m in 1min15sec and I was accurate like a stop watch - 100m : 5min. Today, I was pumping it at less than 45sec per 25m. For an hour. This is amazing. No, this is incredible! I'm a horrible swimmer (only learned to swim later in life) and because of my lack of strength and really weak upper vody I wasn't able to swim anywhere with a slight current. And this is like a 40% increase in strength over less than 3 weeks (meaning I'd have at least slightly more chance of surviving if I find myself caught in a current lol. "Stronger people are harder to kill" right? ). This is so motivational I can't describe it. Nothing beats this feeling of getting stronger. I'm thinking of ditching calorie limits and just doing ESE once or twice a week (since I can do that easily) and focusing on fuelling this new found strength (hello, full cream yoghurts and ice creams ). And with all this, I am still losing centimetres and jeans that got me to start this journey are again starting to fit as they should. "

I don't think I can describe that 'moment of epiphany' that happened to me yesterday when I realized how fast I was swimming. Maybe you'll understand it better if I tell you that I have never, ever in my life before experienced an increase of physical strength (after finishing growth, that is.). I've always been weak and I thought I'll always be weak. I hated gym or any other physical activity done just for the sake of doing physical activity. Looking good (my standards) is the only thing I ever cared about. That all changed when I discovered strength training. Right now, if someone was to offer me 18% body fat, with abs and everything, or 26% body fat with a 120 kg squat, I'd take the latter, no questions asked .