The Wall

I was going through an old thumb drive the other night looking for a project and delete off the old crap that was on it when I came across something I had written.  It was originally written on May 2nd, 2008.  I never did get beyond the Wall that I face at the time.  Post surgery as you will already know I am way beyond that wall now.  Still I found it interesting to reread something from then.

So as you can see from the graph above I’ve been battling a plateau for roughly the past two months at this point.  For me the plateau has been 360 or as I’ve come to refer to them as ‘The Magic Number or The Wall’.  At first I thought I was just having a lazy week after having a good work.  Then I started looking at more closely as it continued for several weeks and knew I had to off hit a plateau and that if I was serous about this that I would have to take steps to break through. 

            First off I want to address the terminology being used because I really don’t like it.  A plateau is some where that mountain climbs stop and take a rest, may take a few pictures and enjoy themselves, for them it is a goal.  For people trying to lose weight a plateau is a point of frustration it is something that stops us and gets in our way.  It certainly isn’t something that we strive for or reach for.  So I say lets call it what it really is a wall.  Its something that we have to push through or climb over, it is in the end something to get past.  Now that we’ve got that out of the way and are speaking the same language lets get on with the blog.

            It’s my opinion that in order to beat something it is best to learn as much as you can on the subject.  That way you have the best possible tools to achieve your goals.  So off to the internet I went, I learned that ‘walls’ apparently come from two different possible sources.  One of the possibilities even claims that other is a biological impossibility.  I’m by no means a medical expert so I won’t even try and guess who is right in this and just present them to you as two separate concepts. 

            The first theory I came across on why have these walls when working to lose weight goes something like this.  The body needs a certain amount of calorie energy to get through the day. After all it has to do the basic things that we all feel are so important to continued life like Heart pumping, Lungs expanding and contracting, the kidney’s filtering and so one.  As we cut down our weight the amount of caloric energy we expend to stay alive goes down as well.  . 

            The next theory is the so called “Starvation mode” and it goes something like this.  Our body detects the reduction in calories and interprets that message as meaning that food is scarce.  So it goes in to what could best be described as a sort of power saver mode and saves any extra energy it can.  It makes sense in a lot of ways to me and would be a good survival method if food really was scarce.  Sadly in this case the body is miss-interpreting the message. 

            Some people say that the second one is biologically impossible, like I said earlier am not going to try and figure out who’s right and who’s wrong.  In the end the reason this happens is less important then what to do about it when it does happen.  That’s the real reason am sure many of you are reading this blog entry so lets get right in to that. 

            During my search every link I clicked offered me a new method to push through the wall or in some cases several of them..

Change things up if you have been focusing mostly on cutting back the calories then switch to focusing on burning the calories through exercise or vice versa.  If your already doing both try changing the amount you’re working out and increasing the intensity and or the resistance.

If you are not already doing so start a food an exercise log,  Keep track of everything you eating the calories too when possible.  Also including in that what you do for exercising.  It gives you a good picture of what your doing and not doing so you can really examine the changes you’re making to your life styles.

Change some of your eating habits can help so try reducing the carbohydrate and fat in take and eat more protein calories.  Just be sure to keep the daily protein calorie intake under 25% of your calories.  You can also try having days that are less restrictive in your diet plan.  That will sometimes help to keep the pounds coming off this is sometimes called Zig Zagging the calorie intake.  Along the same lines you can also adjust the sizes of the meals you eat through out the day and have several smaller meals / snacks through out the day.

I want to close with one site I came across that encouraged you to hang in their and keep it up.  Even though your not losing weight at the rate you might like, it is likely that your still losing although gradually.  This suggestion struck me personally as the height of stupidity and that it would only lead to further frustration.  So don’t just hang in there do something about it make changes and try in things.  Push through that wall and remember there will be another one at some point you broke through this one and you will break through the next one as well.

Your friend in weight loss who won’t give up and hopes you don’t either.