What Do You Do When Your Diet Has Stalled?

What do you do when your diet stalls?

 I have hit a plateau in my diet.  I have mentioned this a few times.

The duration of this plateau became a growing frustration.  I went through different stages of discouragement. But my family and friends just kept encouraging me.  And I came up with some do’s and don’ts for getting through this time.

This is what you don’t do.

  1.  Don’t grab the fattest part of you.

We have all done this.  You’re getting dressed or getting out of the shower, and while you’re sizing up of your physique, you notice that roll that won’t go away.  That arm flab or back fat you are tired of staring at.  You grab it and shake or squeeze it a little, sigh and put clothes on as quickly as possible.

Don’t do this.  When you notice the flab, try to avert your eyes to the parts of you that have changed.  For me I jump my eyes from my “problem areas” to the slimming of my waist.  Or the fact that I have fewer chins. 

Try to find the good.  Mutter to yourself “We’ll get there.” And walk away from the mirror.  

 2. Don’t offer to serve birthday cake at your nephew’s second birthday party.

 

Don’t offer to serve a delicious, two layer, half chocolate, half vanilla, smothered in butter cream, birthday cake.  Don’t slowly slice slab after slab after moist fluffy slab.  Don’t watch as the cake gently thuds on the little cake plates, making them literally spilling over with cakey goodness.  Don’t do that.

Result: one piece of birthday cake devoured, in daylight

      3. Don’t shop for jeans.

I had to buy jeans.  I had to buy jeans because I had a worn a hole in the inner thigh of my current jeans. Yeah, let the awfulness of that sentence sink in.

This type of hole is singlehandedly the easiest way to feel like you’re a thousand pounds.  That, and when you knock something over with your backside.  That just makes you feel like a huge person in a tiny world, like Shrek in a European market.

So I had to shop for jeans.  This can be quite discouraging. 

First, if you are wearing jeans you have had for a while or that you found in your closet, then all you need to know is that they fit.  You don’t need to look at what number is on the tag.  But when you have to get them from the store, the numbers are just staring at you, brazenly hanging from tags or abusively printed on a sticker running down your leg.  The way the sticker has the number over and over again, it’s like the “kick me” sign of the garment industry.

Secondly, no matter what ground you’ve gained in your diet, jean shopping is just too much tugging and tucking, shimmying and squeezing. And overall just deciding how much you actually need to breathe to live.

Now that we know what to avoid, here are some things that you should do.  The first two are so basic and widely known I am making them one point

1.   Assess your diet and exercise 

For me, I feel fairly confident in my diet.  I’m taking out all the right things and keeping in tons of healthy stuff.  I’m eating right.  I tried to see if there are some allowances, the “treats” that are built into my diet, I let myself have to often.  I took stock and tweaked only slightly.

And as far as exercise, well, I have talked about this in previous posts, but for some reason I just have the hardest time getting motivated in this area.  It just seems like it takes a lot to plan or orchestrate.  But one of my readers mentioned that even if you only have a small amount of time to exercise, exercise anyway.  Some is better than none. And slowly I have been able to gain some ground in this area.

2.   Stop weighing yourself.
 

This suggestion seems crazy.  But for me it was necessary.  I had been weighing myself every day.  And every day that the same number appeared was another day of defeat.  The kind of defeat that whispered in my ear that I was stuck.

I even toyed with the idea of giving up, because it felt like this wasn’t gonna work anyway, so quit before it’s an embarrassing failure.  

I resolved instead to stop obsessing.  The stress alone can keep the weight on. 

So I took a break from the scale.  I decided to keep my head down, follow the diet I’ve committed to, try to work in exercise as I can, and just soldier on. 

This break from the monitoring of my weight loss is refreshing.  It feels like this way of eating and exercise has transcended past a diet and is now just who I am.  (Wow, is this really who I am now?  That feels too soon to call four months in. We’ll see.)

Basically I just kept dieting through the crazy.  

Now I’ve stepped back on the scale occasionally, and I’ve seen the numbers creep back down.  It’s not time for the official weigh-in, but it’s good to see.

3.   Look at old pictures of you, when you were heavier than you are now.
 

I needed to remind myself where I came from, and how lousy it would feel to go back there.  I reminded myself of the lethargy, and how I hated anything I put on because of the body underneath it.  I reminded myself that there has already been change, inside and out, so it serves to reason that there could be more.

4. Take encouragement anywhere you can.
 

I created a Pinterest page for these resolutions at the beginning of this project.  When times are dark I can go back there and read the inspirational quotes, Bible verses, and articles.  

But more than the words themselves, when I look at the page I remember the state of mind I was in when I posted them.  I remember the hopeful me, full of zeal and enthusiasm.  I think of her, slightly heavier than I am now, cheering me on.  She would be encouraged by how I look and that I have stayed with this lifestyle this long.

She, the old hopeful me, sees the year stretching out before her, the project as a whole.  Somehow that makes this setback seem small in the scheme of things.

And I have mentioned my discouragement out loud to close family and friends, and let them speak truth to me.  And I have really forced myself to believe them and listen.

5.  Pray
 

I can’t really talk about going through a time of discouragement without it.  Mostly the prayers go something like this.

“I am trying to glorify you with how I am eating.  I think that is all you are really asking of me here.  I am frustrated and I am not sure I have this right but… I am just gonna give this worry over to you and just keep doing what I’m doing.”

In short, “This is making me crazy, so…here ya go”

So there you have it. I am still walking out of this “dry spell,” but I haven’t quit. 

Two of my best friends have black belts in tae kwon do.  I got to see a video of one of my friend’s black belt test.  She says that the key to passing is to just keep breathing. (And, I believe, to know a little tae kwon do).

So I just keep breathing.  Not giving up, not today, and today is all I really need to worry about.

Deep breaths, courage to the sticking place, eyes on the Lord.

What do you do when your diet stalls?