Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Week 15: Plateau

I’ve been pretty fortunate over the past 10 months in that I’ve steadily lost weight.  There were a few weeks that I gained a pound or so, but I always lost it and more on the following week, so I didn’t get too upset.  But then came three weeks of gaining and losing and gaining again.  I was starting to get really frustrated, because I’ve been near militant about keeping an accurate record of calories and exercise, so I couldn’t understand why I was hovering around the same weight for so long.  And then I realized that I was experiencing the one phenomena that all people trying to lose weight dread:  I’d hit my first plateau.

I knew this moment was coming, because it always does, and there’s no getting around it.  I’ve experience a plateau every time I’ve done the dieting thing.  In the past they have frustrated the hell out of me, and on three instances that I can think of, that frustration was enough to make me throw in the towel and completely give up.  Thankfully, things are going differently this time around.

First of all, these days I have a better knowledge of how the body works.  Looking back on the past three weeks, I realize that my training for the 5K was probably the number one reason for this current plateau.  I was building a lot of muscle during that process, and muscle tissue is far more dense than fat tissue, so it stands to reason that my weight gain was probably muscle and not fat.  

Secondly, once I stopped panicking and shoved my frustration into a closet in the back of my mind, I came to the conclusion that I was still losing inches.  The jeans I’m currently wearing were tighter three weeks ago than they are now, and a week ago I bought three new tops that were a full size smaller than what I’d bought the last time I went clothes shopping.  So, while I haven’t lost the pounds, I’m still making measurable progress.

Thirdly, I’m so fortunate to have a strong support system.  In the past I’ve tried to do this on my own.   I rarely talked about my weight loss efforts outside of immediate family (and sometimes not even then), and I would have never blogged about it!  Since then, I’ve made friends with some extraordinary souls, and I’m so grateful that they have urged me to not shoulder this burden alone.  Once I really started to share this journey with others it became easier to move past the frustrating moments and focus on the positive things, especially when I had good friends constantly urging me to not give up.  It made a HUGE difference, and I’m so very grateful for their continuous support!

So, yeah, I’m on a plateau, but thanks to friends, family, and my own ability to learn from past mistakes, I can see the way out.


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