Analyzing Weight Loss Reversals

Today is my weekly weigh-in day, and I have mixed news to report.  My scale says I’ve gained back five of the 12 pounds I’d lost since beginning the project.  Rats.

Of course, this is a fairly common situation in any weight loss project.  Since we generally place a lot of stock in our scale weight, a bounce up can feel like a total failure and even a disaster.  At this point, many people just stop trying to lose weight.  That isn’t always done as a “big decision,” but rather you just “kind of start to forget” to keep track.  Motivation sags and pretty soon a year has gone by since you’ve been back to the gym or written down what you’ve eaten.

Clearly, the mental game of weight loss is key at times like this.  So I am thinking, what to do?  And I realize, the real key is to analyze the gain as best I can.

First of all, not to panic.  Five pound variations in weight are actually within the normal range for anyone.  I’ve had readers tell me that normal monthly hormonal shifts could account for even more weight gain than that — one person commented that she had a regular seven pound gain once a month.

So my five pounds might be partly just random fluctuation.

Second, I should look at other measures.  For instance, my blood pressure is slowly dropping again, after a brief tendency to rise a few weeks back (never to the pre-program level).  And my resting pulse is generally running ten beats per minute lower, and is steadily improving.  This says something important about my overall conditioning — that it is improving significantly, and continuing to improve. Likewise, my blood sugars are generally or always in a good range.

Then there is the tape measure.  While my pounds are up a bit, my waist and hips have shrunk about an inch this week.  Chest is the same, but therein may be part of the explanation for some new weight.

About 2 weeks ago I decided that my legs don’t need much more by way of weight training.  Partly due to genetics and partly due to hauling a lot of weight around, I have always had strong legs.  My calf muscles are huge and bulging and it’s pretty much all muscle down there.  The recent program gave me a leaner, less puffy lower leg look, and so I felt all I needed was maintenance.

But my upper body has never been super strong.  I lift a laptop and books most days, not tools and lumber and cinder blocks.  So I decided to add 10 minutes to my upper body workouts, which amounts to 20 more minutes a week of upper body strength building (a full additional weight workout a week), along with pushing myself a bit more to increase my strength.

I doubt I’ve actually added five pounds of muscle all of a sudden, but I probably added some.  I know I’m stronger, more able to do more in the gym with less sense of effort.  Muscle is heavy.  The fact that my weight is up but my body is slightly thinner does suggest some new muscle.

In terms of diet, I’ve been under my calorie limits most days, but was away on the weekend at relatives’.  So it’s restaurants, both on the visit and during the trips to and from.  Plus generally I’ve felt I’ve been a bit slack a couple of days, and did have two or three days of being over my calorie allowance (like last night,  when all the extra working out and the fact that it was “free cone day” at Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont, led me to a bit of overindulgence.  Guilty as charged.)

In general, then, I can break this extra poundage into a couple of causes: some is probably new muscle, some is last night’s heavy meal (I’ll verify that tomorrow), and some is a need to tweak the diet a bit.  I need more veggies anyway.

The main thing is: if you keep records, you can make sense of seemingly “random” weight fluctuations.  This is never 100% — our faith in having total control over nature is never completely justified.  But some of it is.  And the more sense things make, the less likely we are to just give up in despair.

Because we just can’t.  Ever.