Mystery Solved

In spite of tracking my eating, planning ahead, and sticking like glue to the plan, I’m up .4 of a pound this week.  It’s less than half a pound so I’m not freaking out.  Besides, I know now why I’m a little stuck.

For those of you who are female, you’ll understand.  I’m puffed up like a marshmallow.   I didn’t realize what was going on last week as I’m Peri-menopausal and this is NOT a regular thing for me.  Like 10 months in-between not regular.  One just has to look at my poor little footies to know that I’m retaining a lot of water right now.  On the up-side, my energy level is returning to normal and I feel really, really good.

We’ve totally transformed our eating habits.  The plan focuses on healthy grains, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean protein.  My body is definitely reacting to the changes we’ve made even if the scale isn’t.  I don’t have the drastic ups and downs in energy I was having before we started either.

I talked to my group leader tonight about this and she’s super-supportive.  Supportive to the point that at the end of the meeting I had to go tell her to not worry so much about me….I’m fine.  She was definitely fretting about me and I wanted to let her know it’s all ok.  It made me realize though how big a deal weight issues are with some people.  I’m sure she was fretting because even small gains 2 weeks in a row ( six tenths of a pound total) would be discouraging enough for some people to cause them to quit.  That’s not going to happen though.  I didn’t get here overnight and I’m not going to transform my body overnight either.

She suggested that I track on paper this week so she can review what I’m eating.  I also asked her about the amount of points I’m supposed to consume each day.  Because my weight is high, I’m expected to consume an enormous amount of points; so many points that I usually don’t eat them all or eat something JUST to fulfill my points goal.  I was afraid to tamper with the plan due to the “myth” that if you don’t eat enough you will put your body into starvation mode.  In talking to people and doing research I’ve found that you have to really deprive your body of calories in a big way before that happens.  She suggested I knock 10 points off my daily goal in an effort to kick-start things for me.  The thinking is that because I wasn’t eating thousands of extra calories every day the point content of the plan isn’t quite enough to make me lose.  I’m also cutting the last of the aspartame from my diet.  We’ll see what happens.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.  I’ll keep you posted.  Oh….and here’s a pic of another use for your roses.  I couldn’t find this picture yesterday but found it today while cleaning up my disaster of a hard-drive.