Author: Healthi Coach, Robert Williams
"I step on the scale for my weekly weigh in and instantly get disappointed. A few more steps on that scale confirms that I did not lose weight this week. The sadness and anger flares inside as I think back on the previous week, trying to see what I did wrong. I stayed within my allotted BITES, and even got some exercise in this week! Why is this happening? What is wrong with me, why can't I do this? What is the point of working so hard if I am not going to get results every week? Maybe I should just quit."
Does that sound familiar to you? It definitely does to me. Probably because those exact thoughts have run through my mind.
It can be so frustrating when you think you are doing everything right and are not getting the results you expected. So, if I have experienced it, and you have experienced it, then maybe it is not that uncommon. Maybe we aren't freaks that can't lose weight. Maybe, there is more to it than that. Lets look at some things we can do to improve the scale, or at least improve our mood.
Tracking
First of all, I want to say that there is not a single person on the entire planet that set out to lose weight, did it all perfectly, and never stumbled, never stalled, or never had a random week (or 3) where the scale didn't move for some unknown reason. We are not alone in this. I am one of those that cannot preach enough how important tracking is. If you are tracking everything that goes in your mouth, you might be able to find what affected the scale. Those zero BITES foods are not zero calories. One banana is 110 calories. So, if you set your secondary measure to track calories, and you track all of the zero point foods, you might just see that you had way more calories than your body needed, despite being in your BITES range.
Also, while you are looking back at the previous week, is there a theme in the foods that you can identify? Did you have a lot of salty foods, or maybe a lot of high carb foods, or high sugar foods? All of those type of foods are known to make your body hold on to weight, even if it is temporary and just water retention.
Sleep & Water
Some other factors that can effect the scale are sleep and water. I could write a novel on the importance of those, but let's save that for another blog. Make sure you are getting enough of each, because if not, they could be the culprit.
Exercise
Another factor is exercise. The obvious thing that a lot of us know is that muscle is more dense than fat, so while you may be getting smaller that scale might not be moving. Make sure you measure yourself and track that as well. A factor for me recently is lack of exercise. Before this quarantine started I would get about 10,000 steps a day at work, plus whatever I walked outside of work. Now that I have been stuck at home for a month I have not been moving as much. The way I was losing weight before this, was based off of the amount of calories I burned by walking so much at work. So, I was eating the same amount of BITES without burning the same amount of calories. Kinda makes sense that the scale stopped moving doesn't it? Guess who is making sure he hits 10,000 steps a day now?
Lastly, I want to say you just have to trust the program. Sometimes our bodies just do things that we can't expect or understand. We cannot let that depress us, or defeat us. Instead use it for fuel to learn what we can to work harder and do better. This journey is not a quick and easy one, but it will be a successful one if you stick to your guns and keep going forward.
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