i have to keep telling myself that, because for some reason my brain insists on going there every time i step on the scale and it shows me the same numbers over and over again. i have been stuck between 247 and 252 now for over 2 months and it is very frustrating.

when i started losing weight in march, my goal was to have lost 75 pounds (from 300 to 225) by the end of the year, another 60 the following year, and be at 165 by the start of 2013. as of now, it's mid october and i've lost just over 50 pounds. i've suffered through a 2 month stall, got married, moved, changed jobs, and got dropped into a social situation that's vastly different than what i'm used to. *if* i lose more weight by the end of the year (i can't see me hitting 225 by new years) that will be wonderful, but i need to quit telling myself that i'm a failure because i *only* lost 50 pounds and i *might* not make a deadline that is by no means written in stone.

pity, party of one?

i need to remind myself that just because the numbers aren't changing right now doesn't mean i should give up. i feel like i've got a dr. jekyll/mr. hyde complex going on. sometimes i feel great about what i've done, i feel confident in my changing appearance, and i'm aware that stalls happen. other times i feel like an absolute failure and want to give up. i have not binged, or used the fridge as an emotional crutch since i decided to lose weight.

some positive things i need to remember:

- when i started this journey, i felt like i would die after 20 mins on an elliptical, set to the lowest resistance. now i can do 45 mins on the level 5 resistance multiple times a week, including an hour on monday nights, without feeling like my legs are jelly and my lungs are going to explode.

- i have gone from a size 24 in pants down to a size 18 in a lot of pants, 20 in others... and i can squeeze into some 16s if i don't want to breathe.

- my bra size has gone from a 50DDD down to a 44DD.

- i can wear 2x shirts instead of 4x.

- my shoe size has gone from 11W to a regular 10 (yeah, my feet lost weight too).

- i can now wear the necklace my husband gave me as a wedding present that i couldn't before because my neck was too big and it felt like a choker.

- i have discovered my collar bones, and misplaced my extra chin

- i don't hate having my picture taken anymore, because i'm not terrified of a horrid result.

- my cooking style has changed, and my activity level has changed. my husband has benefited from both of these... and has lost 10 pounds without trying.

- i don't feel tired all the time, and i don't huff and puff anymore if i have to walk up a hill or a flight or two of stairs.

- my rings used to be snug, and now on days when i'm properly hydrated i fear they will fall right off.

- my knees and back are no longer in a constant state of pain from my extra weight.

- i know what full feels like, and i stop there. there is no way i could consume as much food as i did before. one plate is plenty, thanks.

... this is not failure. this is progress.

thanks for reading (and sorry for whining), i just needed to remind myself that not all progress can be measured by the number on the scale.

Look at it like Kaplods. She always says that her goal is to keep off what she lost, and that is the victory. Keep embracing your healthy lifestyle and remember that it is a new lifestyle and that you don't go back to the old ways. I've been bouncing between 187-190 since July, so I know how frustrating it is. But, I've kept off 80+lbs, and that is what I am taking credit for. You've lost 50+lbs. Keep it off, keep focused, keep going, time is going to pass whether or not you are on plan. Forget about a specific "date". I thought I would definitely be at goal in a years' time, and I'm not. But I'm OK with that. I'm making progress, and you are too!

I don't think you're a failure but is your program failing you? that's an awful long time if you've been on plan the whole time. Does it need some tweaking?

OMG I was just wanking and crying over a 2 WEEK stall this morning. Perspective, KIKI!!!

First off, you've had like a billion changes in those 2 months and you haven't gained back what you've lost - I mean that alone is worth a serious WOOT! However, I know how I would be feeling if this were my situation and I wouldn't be whining -- I'd be having and out and out tantrum. Not that this would HELP any, but it's true.

I just think you're amazing for keeping at it. I wish I could offer more than that - you're doing everything right by focusing on your successes. I totally get the Jekyll and Hyde feeling of this journey - who knew it would be SUCH a battle with your own ridiculous self, you know? I am constantly in awe at how completely screwed up some of my responses are to myself.

If this forum is only for constant success, than no thank you. I don't think you should have to apologize for whining or venting or even FREAKING OUT because you are working through your business. If it were all just "I ate whole grains and veggies all day, did 6 hours of cardio and am down 4 lbs this week!" I don't think I'd make it a week reading through posts.

Keep your positive outlook. It is one of your strongest weapons. Back it up with your sense of humor. And feel free to ***** at me anytime you want to, lovely!!!

-Kiki

You should change your title to I am a success!!! because that's exactly what you are, a success.

You didn't fail at anything, just look at your list of acomplishments!

fattymcfatty - i agree. kaplods is a major inspiration to me and i would love to take a page from her book... it's just a little more easily said than done! i am happy with my new lifestyle. and i don't see me changing it.

cherrypie - i've been on plan, but i've also had a lot of upheaval. i'm sure the reason the weight loss is stalled is the level of stress and lack of sleep i've been dealing with. when i moved, i lowered my calorie intake to around 1400 and my weight loss stopped completely. i moved it up to around 1650 and i saw several pounds drop off in a week. then i upped my exercise and now i'm stuck again. heh, my positive changes seem to result in no weight loss!

kiki - thank you for that, you make me smile. humor with my whining is like cheese with my wine. they go so well together and i don't feel so awful if i can smile while i'm irritated.

precious missy - thank you. i'm trying to see that. the light will shine into the hole i've managed to crawl into soon enough. my husband won't let me be grumpy for long. he tells me to cheer up, the sadness is boring him :P

Maybe that is the key. Up your calories to 1800, continue the exercise, and see what happens in a week?

I agree KAplods bring a lot of big-picture sense to the debate whenever she is around - I love her posts, and her attitude of maintain what I have lost ,and maybe add a little more is a brilliant brilliant way to look at it all.

THEREFORE, ERGO, HENCE, EVERY WEEK WITHOUT A GAIN IS A HUGE VICTORY!!!!! CELEBRATE!!!!!!!


Easy to say, harder to do, but anyway you look at it it 50 pounds gone is one of those HUGE victory dances, but the bigger victory is making SURE they don't come back - so many, too many times I lose and then re-gain. If I could say for sure this is the last time I lose these particular pounds I'd be a happy person.

Good for you to have such a great attitude!

FWIW, I've definitely BTDT with plateaus. It could be a lot of things. You said you upped your exercise recently? Once I started lifting heavy on a consistent basis I had something like a 6 week plateau and even after that I was losing SLOWLY. I was losing inches at the time (so always make sure to measure!) but it could be from water retention from exercise.

Also, I don't think it would hurt to try and up your calories a bit more a bit. I was eating something like 1800-2000 around your weight (the times I did calculate it). Or try calorie cycling.

I think you're doing amazing! My plateau also coincided with about a 50lbs loss, I have no clue what it is but maybe our bodies just need a bit of a break at that point (or we need to change things up a bit then too. Good luck!

LOL! It's SO inspiring to hear myself quoted (especially because it's usually when I MOST need to hear the words myself).

52 lbs in 5 months is awesome! I actually want to say "Holy Crap," because that's an average of more than 10 lbs per month. Heck, even in 7 months that's more than 7 lbs per month.

You've done in 5 to 7 months, what it took me about 4 years to accomplish. Well, to be technically accurate, you've done in 5 to 7 months what it took me 37 years to accomplish.


Even though I've lost almost 100 lbs (only a couple more pounds to go), I've not yet experienced even one month in which I lost more than 5 "new" pounds (there were times when I'd gained 5-10 lbs with TOM or as a result of restaurant eating, and then would lose it again within a few weeks).

For the 7 years, my weight loss has averaged 14 lbs per year. If I only count the last 4 years, it's still only been 25 lbs per YEAR.

I am getting better at this. Each year, I lose more than the previous - but we're not taught to see 25 lbs per year as success (even though most people trying, don't accomplish it).

If I don't increase my rate of loss, it's going to take me another 6 years to reach my goal weight.

Now, I think I'll be able to lose weight a little faster than that - but what if I don't? So what? It's still going to be an incredible acheivement to have lost 250 lbs, even if it does take me 13 (or 20) years to acheive it.

I've been told many times that "I should write a book," but who is going to buy a book on how to lose 2 lbs a month?

Unfortunately, no one, because everyone things "losing 2 lbs a month - that's not success, that's failure." And yet most people don't accomplish 2 lbs a month.

And if almost no one accomplishes it, then how on earth can it be failure?

Now the truth is that most people have lost more than 2 lbs in a month - but they consistently compare all of their results to their "best record" not what is realistic in the long term.

According to reviews of the weight loss research, the failure rate for morbidly obese dieters is something like 90 - 98%. And that's just the people who ended up as fat or fatter than they started, because most of these studies that followed up with weight loss patients counted any sustained loss as success (so if you lost 100 lbs, and regained 95, you would be counted as a "success" in many of these studies).

We've defined success in a way that almost no one can achieve it, and then call everyone who fails, lazy, crazy, or stupid? Really!?

It's assinine, but it's "common wisdom."

The biggest change in my life "this time" and the only reason I'm succeeding is that I've learned to recognize "real" success.

All the thousands and thousands of times I quit a diet in the past - it was always because I felt like I was failing. And by common definition, I was. But the common definition is bogus. I didn't quit because I was really failing, I quit because I THOUGHT I was failing (and so did almost everyone else - and I believed them).

I believed that a two month stall (or heck a two week stall), meant failure. And yet "this time," I have experienced not only two month stalls, but also six month stalls and even a two year stall (in years 2 and 3 of "this time" I was able to keep off the initial 20 lbs I lost, but I wasn't able to lose more).

We're taught to not see the big picture. We're taught to feel bad if the scale doesn't move downward. We're taught to set unreasonable goals, and then taught to feel like dismal failures when we inevitably fall short of the goal (because we can find someone who "made it." But we're taught to compare ourselves to the thousands of people who've done better than we have, and not to the millions who are doing worse).


And even when we know all this, it's still hard not to follow the crowd - to do what we've always done, to do what we see everyone else doing.

I don't think I would have gotten this far without 3FC and my TOPS group. If I had been more consistent in my TOPS membership (I belonged to another local group about 3 years ago, but gave up the group after about 1 year).

I love the TOPS group support, especially the fact that the gains and losses are shared each week. Many groups will just have you state whether you've lost, gained, or stayed the same - but in my current group we share the exact number. At first, that intimidated me, but I realized how helpful it was in seeing what "normal" really looks like.

When it comes to weight loss, our culture has made "normal" extremely top secret. We don't know what normal looks like, because we only pay attention to the extraordinary. We don't want to hear about average (especially when we learn that average is far, far less than we've been taught to define as success).

You are succeeding. You are succeeding extraordinarily. And if it's sometimes hard to feel it, you've got to remind yourself of it, celebrate it, brag about it, reward yourself for it. Keep telling yourself what you know to be true, until you believe it.

my cousin (who went from 375 down to 200 after having WLS and then promptly got pregnant) sent me this. it made me smile.

You are not a failure! You are doing wonderfully and if you continue to stick to your plan the scale will eventually move. It's got to! I understand how frustrating it can be though to do everything right and not get rewarded for your efforts. When I was losing and the weight would stall I would just remind myself that this was good practice for maintenance.

I think you should print out your list of of all the positive changes so you can read it often and remind yourself of your success. Also, go into a store and pick up a 50 lb bag of dog food to really get a sense of your achievement. It sounds goofy, but it always helped me along the way.

kaplods - i always always enjoy reading your posts. they are chock full of information and typically help keep me on the right track. thank you for stopping by and putting your two cents in, so to speak. i feel like i was visited by a celebrity

martini - that's the awesome thing about this forum, i've found. someone can always relate, and there's always a post that can help put things back into perspective for you. i'm glad i was able to help, if even indirectly

tai - the 50lb bag of dog food thing? i've done that when i worked at a hardware store. i would go pick up a bag of sand or concrete or floor adhesive that was equal to the amount of weight i lost and tell myself "i used to carry this around EVERY DAY no wonder my legs and back are happier"... it is a great help, i agree!

so much wisdom here!

I'll echo that you have a fantastic list of accomplishments, and so much to be proud of. And 50 lbs is freaking great - but NOT GAINING BACK anything with all you've been dealing with is practically a miracle!

I do agree with those that say you may want to tweak your calories - it would be lovely if weight loss were as simple as a mathematical equation of calories in vs calories out. But we all know that is not the case, esp. with women and our lovely hormones. There is a sweet spot that you need to find that will be the right balance between your intake and activity level and it very well could be a slightly higher calorie level. Try to keep your activity stable while you experiment though, it gets complicated if you start manipulating more than one variable!

and one question - during this stall, have you been continuing to see a drop in clothing sizes/inches? You should definitely be burning fat and it may be other stuff going on that is confusing the scale right now.

Mandy - I'm jumping in pretty late. I am also a member of the unofficial Kaplods fan club. She has such insight and wise words to offer every time she posts. Listen to her and what she has to say. We'd all do ourselves a favor to see things for what they really are. You have accomplished a great deal. Your life has been spun upside down and inside out in the last couple months and you've maintained. That's HUGE!

To Kaplods - thanks for always adding great insight to what we all wish we had said on our own. You are an amazing woman. I wish we could meet.

Lin