These numbers are from Monday:
- Weight as of 2/12/07: 227.0 lb
- Change since last week: -1.0 lb
- Cumulative weight loss: 107.0 lb
- Average weekly weight change: -1.95 lb
Yeah, it's nice to see the number going back down again, if for no other reason than to confirm that the little changes I made in my routine had some effect. And it's just a small turn--a variation in water retention could cause that. So I'll need to see if this trend continues to be sure I've broken this latest plateau. Still ... yeah. Nice.
But I figured out something else about this little stall. I took a tape measure to my waist yesterday. For the longest time my waist had been at 44 inches and just wouldn't budge. Yesterday, the tape measure said 42 inches. This as a result of the same period in which my weight plateaued and even rebounded! But the lost inches demonstrate that I sure as hell lost something recently. The mystery is why this was not being reflected by the numbers on the scale.
My theory is that I may have still been losing some body fat during that time, but I was also building up muscle tissue. This bulk-up was due to my heightened level of general activity--especially in the retail shop, where I'm frequently on my feet and walking from one end of the shop to another (gotta remember to wear my pedometer to work to confirm this impression.) Anyway, muscle tissue is denser than adipose tissue, so even though I aparently lost a large enough volume of fat tissue to decrease my waist by two inches, I also put on enough new muscle tissue to result in a net increase in weight.
In other words, this is a good thing. Lowering the body mass index happens whether you do it by losing fat or gaining muscle. It's just that the dieting industry has kept us obsessed solely with the losing-fat part of the equation.
In fact, traditional dieting pundits would have had me cutting more calories to break through the plateau I was on. Given that my body was busy trying to bulk up on muscle, starving it right at that moment would have been a really unfortunate move. It's one I've inadvertently done a lot of in my dieting history, with doctors' encouragement even. But I'm not going to do that kind of thing to myself anymore.
There may well eventually come a plateau that I can't un-stall without some more drastic changes. I'll deal with that when or if it happens. Right now, I am feeling confirmed in my decision to just tighten up a little and wait out the plateau, assuming my body's making a wise choice about its processes and not second-guessing that choice. It just feels like such a healthier way to roll with it.
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