Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Weight Loss Plateau

My weight loss has slowed down drastically. It hasn't stopped completely but it looks like I've hit a dreaded plateau. I was used to losing 1-3 pounds per week but the past few weeks I've gone up and down but the weight has centered around the same set of numbers.

Rockstar Research has found that plateaus are common in a weight loss journey (Google has 352,000 hits on these magic words). Being a common experience doesn't make it less frustrating but I believe the cure is to refocus on the objective at hand.

EagleDay is a little over a month away, roughly 4 weeks. I'm not going to make the weight target I had originally hoped. I have a choice: give up losing weight or try to lose a few more pounds in the month still to go. I can't go crazy as I can't be weakened before race day but losing an additional 6-8 pounds sounds about right. This will put me under the 1/8 of a ton milestone.

How to do this is another problem. I need a "Plan B" as "Plan A" stopped working. There will be some more longer workouts on the calendar but the caloric input needs adjusting too. I've charted my daily weight and found that my lowest average weight is on Saturday morning and the highest average weight is on Monday morning. That means to me that the biggest focus needs to be on Saturdays and Sundays.

Stay tuned.

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