Plateaus and Scales

Have you ever experienced weight loss?

If you have, you know the joys and frustrations that come with watching that scale.

oh yeah, and I don't weigh 126.4. My goal is 125 and today I'm 13 pounds away from that goal. you do the math.

I go back and forth with my relationship to using a scale. Some experts say every day, some say never. I once read that people who check on a regular basis tend to make better choices about what they eat because they have a visual check up on how they are doing. I tend to use this as my motto and if I weigh in on any particular day, it's always in the morning after I've gone to the bathroom. If I drink water or eat something, I don't weigh myself because the numbers start changing once calories are going in or out of your body. This tends to work pretty well, but one has to guard themselves againt two things:

1. Letting the number determine the kind of day you have. (Yes! I'm two pounds under what I normally am, I can have that extra cookie! or the all too familiar Crap. I'm a pound up from what I normally am. I may as well not eat today and just eat this afternoon when I can't stand it anymore.) You have to let the number act only as point of reference. Committing to weight loss if a mental game, and it will work without a scale. Every day, every choice, has to come back to that focus. Don't let a number alter your day.

2. Plateaus. Oh my. If you've ever gone on a weight loss journey, you know what this is. For those of you who have not, it basically means you've been sucessful losing weight for a period of time, and then you stay at the same weight for four weeks or more, while continuing to eat the same as you were while losing. I'm in the middle of a plateau right now. I've been pushing the same number (give or take one pound) for five weeks. Gulp. My eating habits have stayed the same (probably about a B+) but my workouts have been fading.

When you begin to lose weight, or are experiencing a plateau, and are incorporating more weight bearing exercise, your body feels like you are loosing, but you stay the same number. The reason this happens is that you are losing a little weight, but you are also gaining muscle, which weighs the same as fat (but you look a lot leaner), so you're canceling out numbers.

Eventually the muscles will burn more calories at rest and during activity that will burn more calories resulting in a higher weight loss. But it doesn't happen overnight. So in the meanwhile, you must stick with your goal in mind.

some circuit training. wayyyyy more effective than an elliptical. trust me

Set your compass to the north star and don't let anything change it.