Last weeks renewed fasting efforts paid off with 2 pounds gone, so I'm back at the magical 2 stone loss mark and hoping that another one will give up the fight this week to get me back to where I was before my break. I'm finding the fasting easy at the moment, the hunger is no problem to deal with. This is despite the chaos of the house move, the continuing back pain and currently a sick child at home off school. Non-fast days are another matter, with some of those pesky snacking habits proving harder to ignore after indulging myself on the break. One day at a time...
A couple of thoughts which have come up over on my Facebook group.
Plateaus
As I've mentioned before, I've generally held a very literal view of how weight loss works: energy in (from food) less energy out (from exercise) equals weight loss or gain. Unfortunately our bodies are rather sneaky, and they adjust the efficiency with which energy is used depending on lots of different interrelated factors. Pretty much anyone who has tried to lose weight has experienced the plateau effect - where the diet that once worked beautifully suddenly grinds to a halt. It's very discouraging and frustrating, as there seems to be no logical reason for it, in my literal view anyway.
The following article explains some of the reasons for it, and the ways to defeat it. Part of the reason relates to the fact that your new smaller body needs less food. Yes, the reward for losing weight is having to eat less. How unfair is that? Solutions include altering the diet pattern to nudge the body into a different reaction, adding more exercise, and just sticking with it until you body gets with the program again.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/07/29/202655878/how-to-escape-the-diet-plateau
BMI, body shape and weight
We all get rather obsessed with the numbers on the dial, and BMI is still a well used yardstick despite its known flaws. So much is dependent on body frame that comparing numbers with other people often produces surprising results, as this article shows. (The ladies in the picture all weigh exactly the same.)
http://fozmeadows.tumblr.com/post/80930076791/female-bodies-a-weighty-issue
I read a while back about a lady doing 5:2 who was exactly the same height as me, and had gone from a UK size 20-22 (again the same as my starting size) to size 12-14. This was great news and she looked marvelous. The part that did my head in was that her starting weight was a full 2 stone lighter than me. Same height, same size, 2 stone difference in weight.
I recall being told as a child that I have heavy bones. I'm starting to believe it. It also occurred to me that when I got married over 15 years ago, I wore a size 16 dress and distinctly remember weighing around 12 stone at the time. So I could lose another 3 stones and still only drop one dress size (I'm wearing an 18 now).
Ultimately the focus needs to be on good health. My Facebook team are great at reminding me of this. The numbers are simply a way of measuring progress and keeping me on the right track. At least that's what I keep telling myself :)
Sounds like you're still doing well, break or no :-)
ReplyDeleteBMI is one of those desperately unhelpful measures, I find. Am I right in thinking that it's designed for looking at whole populations, so the inconsistencies due to body shape even out? It's also curious that there aren't separate charts for women and men - there seems to be a huge variation in female body shape (more so than amongst men), so measuring everyone by the same yardstick seems shortsighted at best.
Of course, I could just be bitter because I'm short and rather heavy-set. When I was eighteen years old and the fittest I've ever been, I wore size 10-12, was somewhere between 9st and 9st 7lb, and yet was only just barely under the "overweight" BMI limit. I have a broad and heavy bone structure, biggish boobs, and a rather ample arse. I'm never going to be even close to the same weight or BMI as my friend - also 5'2" but built along the same lines as Tinkerbell. Weight/height seems to be an incredibly crude measure. Still, I suppose it is a useful guide to progress and can give you a rough idea of what to aim for.