[kaplods]

Originally Posted by Nadya

Easier said than done, ennay.

I worked out almost every day. Might have skipped one, two days at most. My calorie intake wasn't excessively high and I was hopeful. I'm trying to race the clock and I'm running out of time. No, it's not a life or death situation and I clearly stated that I know I shouldn't get caught up on the numbers. But when you want something so bad and you have such a short amount of time to get it, it's very easy for you to say don't worry about it, very hard for me, the person working at it, to not care.

Having said that, it's not the first time I've gotten on the scale and seen my weight hold. It's just the first time I've seen it hold with no easily seeable reason. The one other time it happened was because my calorie intake was meh and my workout routine took a dive. But when your calorie intake is fine and your workout routine is pretty good, it can be confusing. Naturally I'd wonder what the cause was.

Actually you did not stall - you lost almost a quarter of a pound, which is actually not too shabby, especially with less than 40 lbs to lose. You're interpreting success as failure. Which is the problem with racing the clock, time-based goals.

Of course, racing the clock is tempting, it's how we're taught to lose weight, and it's what most people do, and it's probably one of the biggest reasons most people fail at weight loss. When you have time deadlines even success feels like failure if you're not on or ahead of schedule. And when the deadline comes, if you haven't lost everything you wanted to (even if you lose most of what you wanted to), it feels like total failure rather than partial success. We rob ourselves of the joy of the success, because we focus on the failure.

Another is assuming that a quarter pound loss is a failure rather than a remarkable success. When I started weight loss "this time" I was only losing a little less than a pound a month - at nearly 400 lbs. That's about what you lost this week. I complained to my doctor that "I should be able to lose at least 2 lbs a week like a normal person," and my doctor set me straight. He said that "most people" can't lose even one pound a month. Either because their bodies won't cooperate, or because they get frustrated at losing slower than they want to and they give up. He reminded me that even one pound a month was extraordinary, because most people don't do it.

You can worry, stress, and rage at the fact that you only lost .2 lbs, but the fact is losing .2 pounds is not only success, it's remarkable success.


You can wonder and worry and rage all you want, but it's not going to change the fact that sometimes there is no easily seeable reason. And past performance doesn't always predict future performance when it comes to weight loss (I never lost this slowly with any previous weight loss attempt. I always lost rapidly and consistently in the past - and now I can't. Just a few years and a few health issues later, and my body just won't do what it used to do). You can't compare your weight loss to anyone else's - not even former versions of yourself. You're not the person you were before, you're the person you are now, and tomorrow or next week things may change again.

There are a bazillion reasons for a gain or stall on the scale - reasons that don't have anything to do with doing anything wrong. Could be TOM (and some women gain at ovulation, some gain during their period, and some lucky women do both). Could be carbohydrate level. It takes more water to digest/process carbohydrates so if your carb intake was higher than your normal this week, you could be retaining water. Injury, illness, and muscle building/repair also require extra water. If your workouts are beyond your usual normal, you can also see stalls and gain because of that extra water the body is keeping and using. Stress and sleep deprivation can also cause weight loss to slow..

There's absolutely no way to even hazzard a guess as to why this happened. You can wonder and worry all you want, you're not going to get an answer because there isn't one. Weight loss just doesn't work that way. If you've never had it happen before, that doesn't change the fact. You were extraordinarily lucky in the past not to have experienced it. Instead of lucky, you're now completely normal (actually, you're still extraordinary because most people who want to lose weight don't even lose the .2 lbs you've lost.

And worrying about it can actually cause or contribute to weight loss stalls, because one of the body's reactions to stress is to shut down metabolism. Worry not only releases stress hormones like cortisone it can intefere with sleep. Sleep deprivation also produces the same stress hormones.


It may be harder said than done, but it really is essential not to stress and obsess over the numbers, or trying to force the numbers to follow the pattern you want it to. It just isn't going to happen unless you're extraordinarily lucky (and most people just aren't that lucky - and even if you are, it's still out of your control).

Ironically the worrying and stressing you're doing over trying to race the clock to meet the deadline may actually be contributing if not causing the weight loss t slow.

[Nadya]

Ugggh, carbs, that's gotta be it. I've probably had too many carbs, my breakfasts have not been good at all, son of a gun. >.< *pushes home fries away* According to Fitday these things pack ~30 grams of carbs and the cooks here kinda just pile them on, I think you can get almost two full servings some mornings. So even though I'm counting my calories, I bet my carbs have been through the roof. I've actually been trying to cut back on them the past few days. I watched Fat Head and thought it made sense so it's ironic that carbs could actually be what caused my weight to hold. I'll be interested to see if I can keep my carbs down to more reasonable levels and see some kind of change a week from now.

And I'm not raging, you keep saying "rage" and that's a really extreme word. I didn't even use any expletives.

[kaplods]

I didn't say you did rage, only that you could (and I meant not only you, but others who could). I also didn't mean to use it twice.

But rage really is a good word, because we really are taught to respond to weight loss on a raw, emotional level. Even mild worry isn't necessary, but we're taught that it essentially is. If we're dieting and not angry, upset, anxious, or at least on-edge, we're not doing it right.

Calm, reasonable, relaxed, and even exciting and fun weight loss really is possible. I wish I had learned that thirty years ago.

I'm a mostly optimistic, happy, easy-going person and I just could never sustain the negative emotions associated with weight loss for very long. So eventually, when I got fed up with the negativity and the emotional rollercoaster, I would quit in frustration thinking "this isn't working." I always gave up the weight loss, because I didn't realize I could give up the emotions.

Now, the weight loss is slower, because I've taken the easier, calmer path, but I also have absolutely no desire whatsoever to quit - EVER - and that's because I've taken all the negativity out of the weight loss - so there's nothing to want to quit. Why would I want to quit something that gives me such pleasure.

In our culture, we make weight loss a terrible thing so that it's something terribly unpleasant that we must endure to get what we want.

Instead, we can make weight loss a pleasure that there's no reason to give up. We can pamper ourselves to our desired weight rather than try to punish ourselves there.

[Nadya]

Well it kind of feels unpleasant because I feel like "the fat girl". No one else is telling me I am and even though my BMI is still high, I know somewhere inside me I'm not really that bad. I'm 10 pounds away, that's nothing in the long run, but I still feel like the fat girl.

Having said that, besides the carbs it's that TOM so I'm getting hit with a double whammy.

[Samantha18]

My weight didn't budge for a good week, then I gained two pounds. Now today my weight dropped 4 pounds overnight and I have a two pounds loss altogether. It was my time of month too. It's really hard to stay motivated when the scale stops moving, this is usually when i quit but I just stuck to my plan. It was hard, but worth it. Weight loss can be weird at times, and it helps me to focus on how I'm feeling rather than numbers. Just know that if you are sticking to your plan, it will come off eventually!