Operation: Get Over the Plateau
Posted by Sarahbear on March 15, 2011
It’s been about 8 months since I started putting in a lot of effort on losing weight and getting in shape. I haven’t made any new progress since January. I’m still hovering around 25 lbs lost, though I’m pretty pleased that I have maintained it at least. I’ve been keeping pretty good track of my calorie intake on myfitnesspal.com and exercising 3-5 days a week. I’ve got my calorie and exercise goals set at a number that should be showing me a 2 lb loss every week, yet I’m not seeing results.
Move, dammit!
Yes, my muscles are toning up. Yes, I’m able to tell a difference in my endurance and stamina. Yes, my body is developing a nicer shape. Yes, I feel good… most days. I’m a numbers kinda girl. I like to see quantifiable progress. When someone asks how my weight loss is going, I would like to be able to tell them the number on the scale is getting smaller. Lots of my friends are supportive and encouraging and they tell me not to pay attention to the scale. They say the weight will come off with perseverance.
After 3 months of staring at the same number, no matter what I do, it’s hard to stay motivated! Especially when I see other people who started around the same time that I did losing twice the weight that I have. It’s been long enough that I should be able to brag about losing 50 lbs too!
But I can’t, because I’m still stuck at 25 lbs. Maybe it’s the shift in hormones. I did stop taking my birth control. It made me happier and less hormonal, but it stalled my weight loss. Maybe I’m not doing enough cardio and am focusing too much on muscle tone with Jillian Michaels dvds. Maybe my body is just use to what it’s being fed and the exercise I’m doing, so I need to surprise it and do something different.
I hope that’s what it is because that’s what I’m doing. Chad gets his bonus this week so I’m going to splurge on some fitness products. I’m going to buy a high quality heart rate monitor (Polar ft4, ft7 or ft40). I’m going to use it to figure out my BMR (basal metabolic rate) to see if maybe the estimate on myfitnesspal.com for my age, height, weight and lifestyle is off. I’m also going to wear it while I exercise to get a more accurate number for the calories I’m burning so that when I eat back my exercise calories I’m not overdoing it.
I’m also going to buy a couple of months worth of Shakeology and the TurboFire exercise dvds. Expensive, but worth it. I’ve researched this stuff for about 6 months now. I’ve had a sample sent to me to test before I spent the money. The Shakeology will be used as an after workout shake, not a meal replacement. It’s to supplement my diet not be my diet. The TurboFire is high intensity cardio, which I feel my body is ready for now and I’ll alternate doing it with the Jillian Michaels circuit training.
Hopefully once I get more accurate numbers, I can figure out what’s going on and why I’m not losing weight. I’ll keep everyone posted.
Heather said,
You should check out the book “this is why you’re fat” I have heard some very very good things about it and it looks at why we are fat in a very different way. I just ordered it today based off of the reviews and a parent on Steves baseball team. She said she stuck to it and the pounds melted away. The best thing (I am guessing from what I read) is that you get to cheat sometimes! And I need that I can’t stick to anything to rugged! But it is at least worth the read.
The other thing I wanted to tell you is I was talking to a trainer at my gym and they said that some new studies have come out over the past few months that all basically say that in order to achieve weight loss (and great weight loss) is that you have to shock your body constantly. So the theory is if you’ve never worked out before and start running and weights (or whatever) you will see weight loss but eventually hit a plateau because now your body is use to what it is being given and so in order for it to see what your doing as a work out it has to be SHOCKED and the work out changed up. The trainer was talking about some new fitness regime but I can’t think of the name of it right off the top of my head. But point being you are right in the fact you’ve got to change it up every once in a while. Maybe it is time to step away from Jillian and work out in a different way. Maybe more intense, maybe weights I dunno But I thought this could be useful! Good luck!
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