Weekly summary: Weekly change, gained one pound. Total weight loss, 76.6 pounds. Average weekly loss, 1.56 pounds.
It's official. I am on yet another plateau. For the last four weeks, I've been hovering around the same weight. I know I lost eight pounds last week, but since I'd gained 7.2 pounds the week before that, it's still hovering.
It's time to ramp up the exercise again, and in this heat, that's not terribly appealing. Today, the time and temperature clock in town registered 107 degrees when I was heading down to my early evening Weight Watchers meeting. Short of increasing my exercise, all I can really do is gut this out until my body adjusts to its new size. Knowing my weight history with the accuracy only a lifelong unhealthy obsession can mean, I know that I weighed roughly this amount for years. This is a size that my body likes. It's comfortable here, and it's going to have to get used to being here before it can accept changing. When I was younger, I was healthy at this weight. I can't say that now. I need medication to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level, and I have neither the muscle tone, the stamina nor the flexibility that are signs of true health. Those are the things that my body has to realize without the conscious interference of my brain.
That may sound odd, but it's the only way I can describe it. We are complex creatures with multiple forms of intelligence. People recognize the existence of muscle memory, where through training and repetition, the body learns and performs a function with greater power, ease and fluidity and less conscious mental engagement. The body has actually learned a pattern of behavior. Weight changes in a yo-yo dieter are merely longer, more subtle patterns, but in my experience and opinion, they have been learned as well.
In taking on this diet, I haven't so much learned a new way of eating. There is nothing in the Weight Watchers program, other than a specific way of tracking, that was new to me. It is good, sound nutritional advice that I have received from multiple sources over the years. What I am doing is "unlearning" a self-destructive way of engaging with food and unhealthy thought processes about my body. That's what makes this so damn hard. Adding new information is easy. Getting rid of old information and habits is worse than scraping off multiple layers of wallpaper. The stuff just wants to stick.
My big motivation this week came during my meeting. Plateaus are frustrating. I look better than I have since I was in my twenties. I'm not close to the pounds lost goal I wanted to reach by now. It would be very, very easy to call it quits and say that I've done enough. Tonight, discussing the little obstacles we face, one of the ladies mentioned that she had been coming for a year and had lost around 25 pounds. 25 pounds in a year. I'd be pulling my hair out. I'm quickly approaching my one year anniversary, and if I'd only lost that much, I'd be even more frustrated than I am now. Yet she has had the persistence to keep on trying, regardless of how long it's taken.
I needed that reminder that this is supposed to be slow going weight loss. This is supposed to be about learning to sustain a healthy body at a stable weight. This is not about racing to some imaginary goal line where I can revert back to another way of eating once it's been reached. That particular lesson is one I'm going to have to repeat and repeat and repeat, but it will continue to sink through this thick skin and thicker skull.
health and wellness, diets, Weight Watchers, weight loss
It's official. I am on yet another plateau. For the last four weeks, I've been hovering around the same weight. I know I lost eight pounds last week, but since I'd gained 7.2 pounds the week before that, it's still hovering.
It's time to ramp up the exercise again, and in this heat, that's not terribly appealing. Today, the time and temperature clock in town registered 107 degrees when I was heading down to my early evening Weight Watchers meeting. Short of increasing my exercise, all I can really do is gut this out until my body adjusts to its new size. Knowing my weight history with the accuracy only a lifelong unhealthy obsession can mean, I know that I weighed roughly this amount for years. This is a size that my body likes. It's comfortable here, and it's going to have to get used to being here before it can accept changing. When I was younger, I was healthy at this weight. I can't say that now. I need medication to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level, and I have neither the muscle tone, the stamina nor the flexibility that are signs of true health. Those are the things that my body has to realize without the conscious interference of my brain.
That may sound odd, but it's the only way I can describe it. We are complex creatures with multiple forms of intelligence. People recognize the existence of muscle memory, where through training and repetition, the body learns and performs a function with greater power, ease and fluidity and less conscious mental engagement. The body has actually learned a pattern of behavior. Weight changes in a yo-yo dieter are merely longer, more subtle patterns, but in my experience and opinion, they have been learned as well.
In taking on this diet, I haven't so much learned a new way of eating. There is nothing in the Weight Watchers program, other than a specific way of tracking, that was new to me. It is good, sound nutritional advice that I have received from multiple sources over the years. What I am doing is "unlearning" a self-destructive way of engaging with food and unhealthy thought processes about my body. That's what makes this so damn hard. Adding new information is easy. Getting rid of old information and habits is worse than scraping off multiple layers of wallpaper. The stuff just wants to stick.
My big motivation this week came during my meeting. Plateaus are frustrating. I look better than I have since I was in my twenties. I'm not close to the pounds lost goal I wanted to reach by now. It would be very, very easy to call it quits and say that I've done enough. Tonight, discussing the little obstacles we face, one of the ladies mentioned that she had been coming for a year and had lost around 25 pounds. 25 pounds in a year. I'd be pulling my hair out. I'm quickly approaching my one year anniversary, and if I'd only lost that much, I'd be even more frustrated than I am now. Yet she has had the persistence to keep on trying, regardless of how long it's taken.
I needed that reminder that this is supposed to be slow going weight loss. This is supposed to be about learning to sustain a healthy body at a stable weight. This is not about racing to some imaginary goal line where I can revert back to another way of eating once it's been reached. That particular lesson is one I'm going to have to repeat and repeat and repeat, but it will continue to sink through this thick skin and thicker skull.
health and wellness, diets, Weight Watchers, weight loss
3 comments:
Read this:
http://journals.aol.com/thesheatons/TheCottageBytheHedge/entries/2007/08/21/same-song-fifth-verse/1190
(I can't remember how to do a link in HTML, but you know you can just copy and paste that whole mess into your browser...)
Amazing how we cling to what is comfortable, even if the change is beneficial. I know that emotionally, I will change. It seems our bodies do too.
Don't worry, Cynthia. You will pass this plateau! I know it. :)
Plateau or not, you are doing great! I still haven't re-re-joined WW, but you and a friend here in south TX are having such success, I am slowly realizing that it may be the only answer to my continual weight gain.
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