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-   -   Today Is My One Year Anniversary! (https://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/weight-resistance-training/27552-today-my-one-year-anniversary.html)

Meg 05-13-2003 04:56 AM

Winning At Fat Loss
 
Paula -- sometimes it is hard to stick to our plans when we hear "oh, I lost seven pounds this week!" or whatever from our friends or colleagues on this or that diet, especially when we ourselves may not have seen the scale move at all.

I think that there are two important things to remember about fat loss:

1. it is not a race
2 .the number of pounds lost is meaningless

First, to “win” at fat loss is to lose body fat while preserving muscle and to keep it off forever, right? So it is completely irrelevant how long it takes you to get there, so long as you get there and STAY there. I did it fairly fast because my body responded so well to exercise and eating clean (and I never cheated). But does anyone care now how long it took me to lose it? Nope. What’s important now is that I am keeping it off.

Second, the number of pounds lost is meaningless. On some diet plans, especially super low-carb, what is being lost is water and muscle along with fat. Sure the scale goes down dramatically, but at what price? The last thing we want to do is to lose muscle. The scale can’t give you an accurate picture of fat loss — only body fat measurements can. So the number of pounds that someone loses doesn’t tell you much about the amount of fat that they have lost.

And, as I can tell you from personal experience, once you quit a diet like that, the weight piles back on as FAT. You lose muscle pounds and they come back on as fat pounds. The net result is muscle loss and that is precisely how I yo-yo’ed my way up to 57% body fat (which is a truly horrendous number).

In actuality, I lost 132 pounds of fat while gaining 10 pounds of muscle, for a “scale” loss of 122 pounds. But the loss of 132 pounds of fat is far more significant to my health (and my pants size) than the scale loss.

So put your ear plugs in and your blinders on and keep on doing what you are doing now. You are doing great!

Remember, “the only way that you will fail to reach your goal is to stop before you get there.”

Meg

mixerchick 05-13-2003 12:58 PM

Meg, you are amazing and inspiring! This is just what I need to hear right now, I am approaching my one year anniversary (June 1st) of chainging my lifestye, and have hit a month long plateau.

What you said about it not being a race is so true, and is helping to keep me going instead of taking despreate measures like diet pills and fad diets. I know what Im doing now I can do forever, so what if it takes me longer than Id like it to.

verna

TonyaS 07-23-2003 02:18 PM

Meg, Mrs. Jim directed me to your thread, I posted on the Success column for some advice on maintaining, I am struggling lately, and my mind is going in circles... thanks so much Mrs. Jim, again, for directing me to this thread, and thank you Meg for posting it! Congrats to you on your success! I hope I can find my strength again that I had so much of 10 months ago..

jennifa 07-23-2003 03:52 PM

Happy Anniversary!
 
Dear Mighty Meg,

Thanks so much for writing this post. Right now (as you know) I am struggling with what Bill Phillips refers to as "crossing the chasm."

I have quite a volume of literature on my own attempts to lose weight and keep it off. Have I lost the weight? Yes. Did I keep it off? No. So right now my big question is this:

What am I going to do this time that will make today's paperwork the beginning of a success story and not the middle of a work of failure?

Your post did a lot to answer that. BIG TIME. Thanks.

Enjoy your special day!!

Mel 07-23-2003 06:18 PM

Wow, I'd forgotten this post and thread. While EVERYTING impresses me, it was one of the lines towards the end that I don't remember reading that got me today. You got through a bad mammogram without going back to food. My bad mammogram cost me 5 pounds :( Luckily, that's all it was.

Tomorrow is my 2 year anniversary of starting this journey.

JEC 07-23-2003 09:51 PM

Congrats meg!

Karen: I saw the pictures as well and I think that it was very brave of her to post them considering what she has to lose. I guess the real lesson in that was that we all need to stop putting people up on pedestals and realise that we are all human.

JC

diphthong 07-25-2003 10:07 AM

I just started the journey too, 03/03/03. Meg and Mrs. Jim keep my head on straight. It's taken me 4 months to define my new way of life through experimentation. I am definitely copying Meg's anniversary post for personal use. Thanks for all your sharing and caring.

dip


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