Well, it had to happen sometime. I went to weigh in for my weekly weight-management group, and my weight was 300 pounds. Which was a moral victory last week, but ... not the number I was hoping to see this week. Alas, it appears I have hit that bane of all people intent on losing weight, the plateau.
A plateau is what happens when the body's metabolism notices that there's been a net deficit of calories over the past several weeks, and shifts into low gear to resist further weight loss so that the body's fat reserve lasts as long as possible. Now this is a brilliant mechanism for the body to have evolved in order to survive famines and such. However, when there is no famine but simply an attempt on your part to deliberately get rid of a major overage in the fat reserves, this brilliant mechanism turns into a royal pain in the butt.
Needless to say, this phenomenon has had a history of being vastly misunderstood by anyone who has never had to do any dieting themselves--including many doctors and nutritionists. But the phenomenon is annoyingly real, and knowing this can save one a great deal of angst and aggravation.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I've plateaued, given that my weight loss last week was a bit lower than I had been seeing up to that point. And then there were all those food cravings dogging me in recent days. I now suspect that these were both signs that my metabolism was beginning to do the shift, both digging in its heels to stop the downward momentum, and upping the demand for high-calorie foods so that the organism (me) would get busy and find some food already.
Never fear, though. As understanding of this plateua business has grown, so has the list of strategies for breaking a plateau. Interestingly, cutting food intake is not necessarily one of them. Yeah, it is prudent to do an audit of one's eating to see if there have been a few too many liberties taken, or if one has unconsciously been getting a little wacky with the portion control. But if one's food had been totally compliant, cutting the food level even further can be counterproductive--because then your metabolism will think the famine's getting even worse out there and will try to slow down even more.
No, what you've got to do is get the metabolism kicked into high gear again, and this is where exercise can be the great equalizer. Especially weight training exercise. I mean, cardiovascular exercise is fine too, but there is now documented proof that increased muscle work and muscle mass raises the metabolic rate, because muscles suck up a lot of nutrients when they're working. Soooo... it looks like it might be time for me to pick up a pair of those cute little handweights and pump a little iron. (In addition to some aerobic work, especially now that my knee seems to be recovered).
Changing up one's food is also a recommended plateau-busting strategy. I was just saying, in my previous post, that I had gotten into a bit of a food rut and needed to perk things up with new stuff. So I'm going to go with that idea. I also now realize I've been getting a little lackadaisical with the many-small-meals strategy -- i.e. the business about eating several small meals a day boosts one's metabolism and results in more weight loss than eating the same quantity of food in just two or three larger meals. So I'll give that a whack too.
There are other strategies as well, but I think I'll just try those for now, and see if it helps. Meanwhile, I have fixed myself a dinner that is a veritable umami extravaganza, full of glutamate-rich mushrooms seasoned with soy sauce. And I'm remembering that, regardless of what the number on the scale sez, I'm already ahead of the game because I haven't strayed from healthy eating one iota.
Weekly weigh-in -- back on track; plus: water water everywhere
Well, I have busted out of the plateau that had assailed me at last week's weigh-in: 296.5 pounds, representing a loss of 3.5 pounds since last weigh-in.
In hindsight I do believe that plateau was all about a fluctuation in water retention, because the bloating I was noticing in my feet and ankles last week has eased off considerably since then. It probably helped no end that I got a lot more careful this week about remembering to drink my full 64 oz of water each day. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive, but it's a medically confirmed fact that drinking plentiful water actually helps relieve water retention, because it helps balance out the body's sodium levels, and sodium is one of the body's main tools for regulating water content.
And weirdly, I have had a real struggle keeping up with my water consumption. I dunno if I just have a mental block about it, or what. But I'd lose track of how much I'd consumed; I'd get buried in my work and only eventually look up and realize it was 10pm and I'd only drunk something like 3 glasses; and a million other little things would distract me from this simple task. It doesn't help any that I find water kind of boring. And San Diego's tap water is not the tastiest stuff in the world either. Yet something in me rebels against shelling out good money to buy bottled water when it's available free from the tap. I think it's the tightwad training instilled in me by parents who grew up in the Great Depression.
Whatever the reason, it became clear that I needed to get the hell over myself and quit letting these little mental games sidetrack my progress. So I have been trying various strategies. I tried some of those flavored sport waters--I found them too sweet, and kind of flat. I really like drinking those selzers flavored with no-calories fruit essences; alas I finally had to admit that the carbonation was making my tummy feel like an inflated balloon. So finally I was back to plain old water--but with some helpful tools.
Firstly, I found at the grocery a clever water bottle designed to contain exactly the 64-oz recommended daily allotment of water; I now fill that up at the beginning of each day. Next, I set a reminder to drink water in the calender/scheduler program on my computer--every hour, it bings at me with the message "DRINK WATER!" and I take a few more swigs from my day's allotment. By these two simple steps, I was able to assure myself that my innards were well-watered this entire week--and just look at the difference!
You want to be drinking plentiful water when on a weight-loss regimen anyway. When you're losing weight, your body is basically drawing on your fat stores and digesting it for any energy needs not met by your (diminished) food intake. The waste products of that digestion need to get out of your body, their exit route is your kidneys, and your kidneys need sufficient water to help flush this stuff out. Especially of concern is the fact that your body fat is more than likely storing a lot of environmental pollutants and other fat-soluble toxins--not unlike the way fatty ocean fishes such as tuna have a tendency to store mercury in their body fat. When those fat deposits start being burned off, those toxins are also released into the bloodstream, so you really want to flush that stuff the hell out too.
So now, properly watered and properly back on my weight-loss progress, it is time to contemplate dinner ... and getting ready to do it all over again tomorrow.
May 09, 2006 at 05:29 PM in General commentary, Weekly weigh-in | Permalink | Comments (2)