The Dreaded Plateau

Trying to lose weight is a series of occasional highs surrounded by a vast sea of frustration. At least that’s the way it works for me. When the number on the scale goes down, there’s just no better feeling. In my case, those occasions are generally spaced out with a lot of incidents of frustration when the number either doesn’t change at all, or actually goes up (temporarily). It’s so easy to get discouraged when you are following the rules and exercising frequently – and seeing no results. Perhaps part of the problem is that we live in a time when we are accustomed to immediate gratification – cause and effect being adjacent to each other in a timeline – and we don’t deal as well with the “eyes on the prize” scenario.

In the dieting world, this is referred to as a plateau. Plateaus can be anywhere from a week to several months. This is the point at which your body decides to fight back and try to maintain your weight – a built-in response to prevent starvation by holding onto the pounds. Even if you are extremely obese, like I am, your body still responds to weight loss that way. It is during plateaus that people usually “fall off the wagon” – all that hard work and self-denial and nothing to show for it. I’m no different – every diet I’ve ever undertaken has resulted in a long plateau, which ended when I decided “to heck with it – I’m going to eat whatever I want – might as well!” and that was it. Once you fall off a particular diet or way of eating, it is so very much harder to re-start – you always have that feeling of “what’s the use? I’ll just quit losing again”.

I’m a tough case, to be sure. I’ve probably lost at least 500 pounds – if not more – in my lifetime. In the end, I give up and start eating things that aren’t good for me again – and put on everything I’ve lost and more, and I do it very rapidly. It’s not out of the question for me to gain 20 pounds in a month. I had a metabolic study once, and the endocrinologist told me that I was too efficient – that my body needed fewer calories to maintain my weight than anyone he had seen in his practice (and he wasn’t a young man, either!). That’s not an excuse for giving up, but it is a contributing factor in my frustration with weight loss efforts.

This time around, I’ve hit a number of small plateaus already. So far, the weight loss has restarted in 2-4 weeks, as long as I keep working at it. There could be any number of reasons for this - for example, I have greatly increased the amount of physical activity in my schedule, and I’ve been building muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat. So sometimes, even when I don’t see the scale number change, I do see a change in the tape measure or in the fit of my clothes. Other times, I can be retaining water – this frequently happens when I suffer a bout of fibromyalgia. I don’t know what the relationship is – I just know that for me, there is one. Regardless of the reason, I can see my weight fluctuate as much as 3 pounds in the course of a few days.

What I can say this time around is that there has been a change in my attitude. While I’d love to see the scale show weekly progress, I have committed myself to doing this even if I don’t see it. I’m determined that this will work and I’ve gained an understanding that it may not happen quickly. I truly believe that this time I will be able to take off a large chunk of my weight. Maybe not all that I’d like to see gone, but a significant amount – enough to allow me to have the knee surgery I need and regain some mobility. I want to enjoy whatever years are left to me, and part of that enjoyment would come in being able, not disabled, if there is any way I can accomplish that. And so now I’m going off to the gym to run 35 laps and 30 minutes of resistance training in the warm water pool.