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Originally Posted by 30 Fat Still Awesome
Thanks guys. I was just disappointed because I'm on a strict diet, and then not losing any weight for a week, that is somewhat sad.
No it really isn't. It's entirely normal. If you ate 500 calories, you still could have a no-loss or even a gain week (I've done it).
We're taught to be disappointed in any weight loss - it's the way we do it in this culture. It's a matter of pride to never be satisfied, to always expect better. But I don't think it's a virtue at all. I think it holds us back, because disappointment is deadly to weight loss. When you start seeing good losses and normal fluctuations as failures, at some point you start believing that you're failing, when you're actually succeeding far better than most. You feel like weight loss is a race, and you're trailing behind "everyone else" when you're really in the top 5%.
It's like running in the boston marathon and seeing the 1,000 people in front of you, and not the 19,000 behind you. Thinking you're behind "almost everyone else" when half the people behind you feel with certaintly that they're "failing" because they're not where you are.
I really think weight loss statistics would be far improved if we didn't mistake rapid wieght loss for normal or slow weight loss - and it's really a crying shame that we so often mistake rocket-fast weight loss for slow weight loss. We take our own personal best weight loss week (even if it was 20 years ago), and expect to achieve that every week. Or we see that someone our size or smaller lost twice what we have one week, and decide that we should be able to lose that too - every week.
You're still not seeing yourself as a cheetah. If you took 1,000 people your height and age, and put them on the exact same diet you are on, there would be people who lost more than you, but there would also be many (probably even more than half) who would lose less, but because you're not in the room with all of those people, hearing about their losses, you assume you're doing less well than you are in reality.
Who cares about anyone else, though right? But the problem is, as long as you see your weight losses as "disappointing" you're putting yourself at risk of feeling like you're failing when you're not. Give yourself enough disappointment, and you're going to feel that weight loss efforts aren't worth it, that you're failing so you might as well quit, but you'll be quitting while you're ahead, you just won't know it, because you're only looking at the failure (that isn't there) instead of the amazing success that is.
I was where you are now, thousands of times in my life. I quit not once, but thousands of times because I thought I was failing, when I was actually succeeding. I was a cheetah even at the failing point. As a succeeding turtle now, I wish I had realized I was a cheetah all those times. By all previous standards, I'm a dismal failure. My "success" this time is far, far slower weight loss than all my previous failures.
Don't allow yourself to see failure where there is tremendous success. I don't want anyone to make the mistake I did, even though I know I can't stop it. We're still being indoctrinated through our culture that any weight loss under 2 lbs or under 1-2% of our body weight is "slow" weight loss. When even 1/2 of 1% is cheetah-fast. We're taught to see failure where there is amazing success. And it's why so many people give up far before reaching goal. They think they've failed, when the only failure is giving up (but it's very hard not to give up when you're constantly disapppointing yourself).