Diet day 137

[darkemeralds]

I spent almost the entire month of February at essentially the same pound on the scale. It was enormously scary and frustrating, but I learned several things from it.

• There really does seem to be a starvation response in which my metabolism really does slow down. I've got the numbers to prove it now: during February, my metabolic number (calories per pound per day) dropped from 10.9 to 10. Doesn't look like much, but it's a ten percent decline.


• Stressing out over it makes things worse. Stress makes everything worse, and I've got enough stress, thank you, without volunteering for more based on two-tenths of a pound on the bathroom scale.


• EFT Tapping, while not a magical weight cure, really does help reduce stress, in very subtle ways.


• It was scarier to increase my calorie intake after a hundred days of dieting than it was to decrease it on Day One. I'm still a little scared of falling off the wagon because of the extra "treats" I've been allowing myself the last couple of weeks, but so far, so good.


• There's a lag of ten days or so between altering caloric intake and seeing changes in the trend. I need to remember that. The ten-day lag is a test of patience and belief.


• My thrilling weight loss toboggan ride slowed to a crawl when I passed back through the weight I last had on a particularly bad day five years ago. Things fell apart in my life on that day, at that weight, in some of these same clothes. This not without significance. I spent the month dealing with it.


• On that basis, I can predict my next plateau: the weight I was at fifteen years ago, another significant falling-apart point. It's like I'm going backwards through time and pausing to pick up the pieces. Too bad I won't actually be 25 again at the end of it all. Sigh.

It looks like the rain is giving us a break for the first time all week, so I'm going to get out on Eleanor with all three baskets and burn 500 calories or so doing the Major Shopping. Then maybe a pedicure. You know, to celebrate getting off that one endless pound.

Comments

[tehomet]

I deleted my earlier comment in case it didn't come across the way I intended.

What I really meant to say: It's good that you're documenting all these things. Perhaps you could base your second book on this project?

[darkemeralds]

I feel like I'm just adding my mite to a growing body of data. I'm not sure there's much of a story here, although I'm beginning to be interested in the germ of a story that popped up for me this afternoon.

I saw a woman about my age in the grocery store, and I noticed her because she was very slim. Not a typical Portland athletic-looking muscular slimness, nor yet the pinched skinniness of a vain aging flower who never really dares to eat. She just struck me as that magical thing, naturally thin. Her stance was relaxed, her clothes and hair were decent but unremarkable, her attitude seemed pleasant and easy. She was making no statement of any kind with her appearance.

And the things that arose in my head! Oh dear God. I was really taken aback by them. Anger, hatred, resentment. All the privileges she has enjoyed, during which she has stolen opportunities from me, personally. All of society's lavishing of unfair and entirely undeserved advantages on her--to my detriment. It went on and on.

Understand that it was very subtle, but I've been doing a bunch of work in these areas and in fact had been listening to a seminar on similar topics during the bike ride to the grocery store, so I was able to catch the poisonous thing as it slithered past.

I'm not sure whether there's a story here that I can tell, but I feel like I'm entering a realm where a story might be possible.

[cookiemom6067]

I had a flash of insight during a period of weight loss several years ago that mirrors what you are saying here. I realized then that weight loss was like a personal archaeology expedition. As the pounds come off, it's like reaching a new layer of personal history - and in a lifelong dieter, it can be both emotional layers and reminders of past "failures" - plateaus that were not patiently waited out, but that sparked a full rubber-band-snapping-back rebound into regained weight, with more besides.

Yes, the weight that you remember for triumphs and the weight that remind you of dismay - waiting to be "uncovered." I believe either might provoke a plateau response.

[darkemeralds]

How interesting that you've experienced something so similar. I'm glad to know that if my concept is nuts, I'm not alone in my nuttiness! But actually it does feel very valid, at least as a metaphor, doesn't it? Archaeology seems an especially apt image.

I suspect (tentatively) that if any particular weight-layer in the archaeological record had represented triumph unalloyed by dismay, I wouldn't have added layers of fat over it. The twice in my life when I "arrived" at some sort of goal weight, I was not only disappointed by how little good it brought me, but dismayed by the unforeseen consequences of looking the way I thought I was supposed to look.

I believe that the biggest reason why it's Different This Time is that my age and experience have eliminated all magical expectations as well as most of the hazards on the other side of the coin, being that no woman is "supposed" to look 55 years old, and nobody will bother me.

[bluemeridian]

Congratulations on hanging in there through the slow down!!

[darkemeralds]

Thanks. I wish I could take credit for "hanging in there," but in fact I obsessed and stressed my way through most of it.

Sigh. One is still oneself through thick and thin, huh?

[karen_jk]

Your courage and perseverance are an inspiration. Truly.

so much emotional strength here.

[darkemeralds]

I appreciate your perspective on it. It felt like a complete flail-a-thon to me while I was in it!

Thanks for your encouraging words.

[verilyvexed]

I doubt it's any consolation, but nearly every time I logged my weight this past month, I wondered how your plateau was holding up. <3

[darkemeralds]

LOL!

It's nice to be remembered.

[verilyvexed]

XD

Mostly it was during the days the scale was toying with me, or refusing to move. You are an inspiration! "If emeralds didn't shoot her scale, then I won't either..."