Only within the last two days have I noticed my weight even drop a pound extra compared to my last “milestone”. In fact, it has went up from 149 to 155 to 152 to 149 again - just to tease me. Almost this entire month I’ve been stuck at a plateau.
Today, I weighed in and noticed I’m at 148. That is promising.
I was doing some research about plateaus and why we seem to get them. I came across this MSN Health article, Stuck at a Plateau Weight: What to do when weight loss comes to a halt.
The following was amazing to me:
When someone is extremely overweight, it’s common for weight loss to happen fast initially, but then slow down. The National Institutes of Health’s guidelines for treating overweight and obesity in adults say there’s often a predictable plateau after about six months.
I felt myself get excited. Hurray! I’m not alone and this isn’t odd. It’s not like I’ve been doing something wrong, which is how I felt.
So what do I do? They suggest:
First of all, rather than trying to lose more weight right now, focus instead on weight maintenance—keeping off the weight you’ve already lost and fighting your body’s tendency to regain it.
To maintain the weight loss, and to continue losing, you may need to eat even more healthfully than you already are and be slightly stricter about portion sizes.
…
But you may need to increase your activity—either by working at a slightly higher intensity during your cardio sessions, or by adding a few more minutes to each one, or adding another day of cardio. Every person is different but research suggests that it takes from 60 to 90 minutes per day of moderate intensity exercise on most days of the week to control weight.
This also helped me to realize I’m going in the right direction. I’ve been continuing to add to my workout routine. I’ll share more about this later. And if you follow me on Twitter then you’ve seen what I’ve added.
So far I’m up to 55 minutes of moderate exercise daily. Going to do my best to push that another 10-20 minutes in the coming weeks.
Almost there. Going to keep on keeping on. Can do! Can’t wait to share with you some of the new exercises I’ve been trying.
Peace and love.
