Today is Saturday, December 19, 2015. As of this morning, I was at -25 lbs. I first saw this weight on Tuesday, Nov. 17. About 2 weeks later, I was down to -27 (Nov. 28). The last time I saw -27 was Dec. 4. Since then, I've been bouncing around between -26 and -24.
I have hit a plateau. Weight Loss Plateaus are very common. Everyone who is trying to lose a lot of weight hits them. It is usually because the metabolism of your body changes as it gets used to the new pattern of reduced calorie eating. Also, as body mass changes, the amount of calories needed to sustain that body mass changes.
At the Dec. 9 Weight Watchers meeting, we had a sub leader. Her name is Liz. She has lost 103 pounds. She did it in a little over 3 years when she was in her 30s. She has maintained this weight loss for 27 years. I talked with her about the dreaded plateau. She said she went through 3 of them, and the longest was 5 months. I talked with her as well as my regular leader Janet about ways to break the plateau. They both recommended changing things up by eating different things, and moving in different ways.
Tonight, out of curiosity, I did some online research into the subject, and I found 2 very good articles. One is by professional fitness expert Jillian Michaels. It's called,
"Break Through Any Weight Loss Plateau" . She recommends being sure you are eating fewer calories than are being burned and changing up the work out routine. Beyond that, it could be a hormone imbalance.
The next article I read was by fitness trainer Marc Perry who has his own program online called Built Lean. His article is called,
"Weight Loss Plateau: Tips on How to Break It." Most of the points he makes are similar to Jillians, he just goes into more detail. He also mentions something called Calorie Cycling. This is a concept that I've heard about before, which makes sense to me. This is the idea that you have a high calorie day periodically in order to keep the body from getting too used to the low calorie routine. Example: 1 high day, followed by 3 low days - repeat that pattern. Individuals have to find what works for them. This is something I've seriously thought about trying. At one time, I thought about eating whatever I wanted on weekends, and then being very careful and good the other 5 days. I kind of did that at times, but I wasn't tracking everything I ate, so I'm sure I wasn't very accurate or consistent.
As far as I can tell, Weight Watchers' official recommendation is to stay-the-course and eventually the plateau will break itself. One thing I thought about was just going off WW for the holidays, and then starting back up in January, to see if that makes a difference. I certainly don't want to gain though, and that is what scares me about going off of the point tracking. Of course, I can still track points, but just keep each day to a higher point count unless I see the scale going up.
I have a doc appt next week so I'm going to ask her about it and see what she recommends. As an interesting side note to all of this, for about a month (mid-Nov to mid-Dec) I was having a strange sensation in my upper left abdomen. It was a muscle tightness that came and went. At first I thought it was stress/tension, but it kept happening after I felt the stress I was under should have been lifted. There was no pattern to it as far as time of day or connection to eating. Each time it happens, it only lasts a minute or 2 at most. I talked with a friend who has lost about 60 lbs, and he said he had pains when he was losing. I mentioned this to my doc and she said that gall-stones can result from rapid weight loss (since I lost the first 16 lbs in 5 weeks), and she is having me get an abdominal ultra-sound. Of couse, as soon as she recommended this, the muscle tightness pretty much stopped happening. She also did an EKG to rule out heart-related issues. So far, that looks good, but she's also having me get a stress test, just in case.
I knew when I started this that the road would not be straight, and the weight-loss would not be consistent. My optimistic objective of -10/month is obviously not very realistic. WW recommends 1-2 lbs/ week. I would be happy with losing 8 lbs a month or even 4 right now! Actually, right now I'll be happy to make it through the holidays without gaining!
Stay tuned. I'll let you know what the doc says next week. If any of you have plateau-breaking suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
Thanks for sticking with me!
:)Amy
