Category: Fitness

This week was a first in this 20 pounds in 20 weeks challenge: I gained weight.  Not much, mind you.  Just a half a pound.  It was still a bit disconcerting to see the scale numbers go up.  I didn’t do anything too out of the ordinary last week.  Not giant points splurges to speak of.

Even if this “setback” were larger or if this spans a few weeks without weight loss, the key thing to remember is that you can’t let it get to you.  In my experience, a body undergoing weight loss will often reach a plateau.  At this point, many people will get discouraged.  They will notice that they are depriving themselves and nothing is being reflected on the scale.  It is here that the danger of falling off the wagon lurks.

When you reach a plateau during weight loss, just ignore it.  Your body needs a week (maybe two, maybe three) to readjust before the weight loss begins again.  Keep your weight loss routine up and you’ll soon see the numbers begin moving down again.

I wasn’t expecting much in the way of weight loss this week.  After my 1 pound drop last week, I figured I might plateau for a bit.  But one thing I should have learned is that weight drops can surprise you.  So I was pleasantly surprised to see 195.5 pop up on the scale.  That meant a drop of 3 1/2 more pounds and brought me a hair away from the halfway mark.

Now, I find myself in the unusual position of fighting my sense of optimism.  Part of me looks at my weight loss this past month and figures that I’ve lost 2 pounds per week on average.  If I continue like that, I find myself thinking, I’ll be pretty much at my goal weight by time we go to Disney World for the Disney Social Media Moms conference.

Some optimism is good, but you’ve got to keep things in perspective.  Like last week’s advice not to give in to pessimism when your scale numbers don’t plummet like they do on TV, too much optimism can be a bad thing.  If you optimistically expect huge weight loss numbers, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.  Of course, some optimism is healthy.  You don’t want to go into a weight loss plan thinking “I’ll end this at the exact weight I started at” or “I might lose a couple of pounds but I won’t reach my goal.”  However, you also don’t want to say “I lost 3 pounds last week so I can expect to lose at least that much every single week or else I’m failing at weight loss.”  It’s all about balance.

After a 3 pound weight loss week and a two pound weight loss week, it was a little disappointing to step on the scale and see only a single additional pound gone.  I know, however, that this isn’t a bad thing.

When you first start on a weight loss plan, you’re bound to post some big numbers.  Then, as the plan goes on, those big numbers disappear.  Unlike The Biggest Loser, we normal folks trying to lose weight aren’t going to shed 10 pounds every week.  In fact, that’s just not healthy!

There’s a reason that I chose a span of twenty weeks in which to lose the pounds I want to shed.  Ideally, weight loss should come in 1 to 2 pounds per week segments.  There are some exceptions, but this is healthy weight loss.  So, while it is easy to get discouraged when the pounds don’t go flying off, you’ve got to celebrate the little victories and keep your eyes on the big picture.  Even a single pound lower on the scale readout is a step in the right direction!

One of the easiest ways to sabotage weight loss is to set a single goal and then get frustrated when you aren’t reaching it.  That’s why I’m a big fan of having an overarching goal as well as a series of mini-goals.

In my case, my over-arching goal is, of course, to lose twenty pounds.  However, this could take me months and I wouldn’t want to feel like I haven’t crossed any important milestones on the way.  Therefore, I consider every five pounds lost to be a mini-goal.  (Except for the last one, of course, since then I cross my overall goal.)

This means that I’ve reached the first of my three mini-goals.  I’m now down by five pounds and am ready to say goodbye to that “2” at the beginning of the scale’s read-out.  Since all goals should come with a celebration, perhaps I’ll “treat” myself to a serving of non-fat chocolate ice cream with some whipped cream.  Then again, considering the freezing cold outside, maybe I’ll find a warmer celebratory snack.