January 1st of this year, I decided to start tracking my calories, eating healthier, and trying to lose weight. I set my calorie limit to 1200 and stuck to it, weighing myself every morning for accountability.
For a month, nothing happened. I just couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. I figured I must be doing something wrong. Underestimating my calories (I don’t have a food scale), not logging something, sodium intake, etc. I made myself crazy trying to figure out why it wasn’t working. I tracked everything, overestimated portion sizes, stopped eating out, cut down on carbs, cut out everything except black coffee/tea and water, ate more vegetables, started walking a certain number of steps every day...
Nothing worked.
It was so frustrating. I was on Reddit every day, looking at people’s success stories, scouring every post and comment for tips and following all of them, doing research on nutrition and healthy weight loss the entire time. I even made sure to do it healthily because I read that unhealthy weight loss is less likely to work and can make you gain! If it was a weight loss strategy I was doing it, and I followed every instruction to the letter. I didn’t cheat, I didn’t eat anything “secretly” without logging it, even when it put me over. I just could not for the life of me figure out. I figured I just wasn’t the kind of person who could lose weight. Maybe I had a health condition. Maybe I was just even lazier than I thought. But I figured, hey, I wasn’t gaining weight. And with my new diet, I felt way better than I ever had. I had more energy, better focus, and my skin was clearing up. Even my period cramps got milder. Might as well stick to it.
So I gave up.
I didn’t even bother weighing myself every day for the next month. I still weighed myself about once a week, with a glimmer of hope for the elusive “whoosh” effect that I kept hearing about. But one week passed, them two, then three, and I never saw the magic drop.
I just kept tracking my calories and did my best to stay under 1200, even though I was secretly pretty sure I wasn’t, because I wasn’t losing anything, and that’s scientifically just not possible. And I figured if I was already tracking so consistently and still not losing, if I stopped tracking I’d probably balloon back out way past what I even thought was possible.
Anyways, then one day my friend came over and wanted to weigh herself, and that’s when I learned that scales don’t work on carpet.
She brought it into the bathroom and we both weighed ourselves and I had lost a THIRD of my goal!!
I can’t describe the feeling, you guys.
It was better than sex. Better than drugs. Better than every piece of junk food I did not eat. When I saw the number on that scale, I was flying. Cloud Nine. Pure heaven.
But even better, by then my weight loss didn’t even feel like a diet anymore. It was just a habit. The next third of my goal weight loss practically melted off over the next few months.
But then, I don’t know what happened.
Maybe I got too confident. Maybe it’s just that the last ten pounds are notoriously sticky. But it’s been about six months since I started “dieting”, and I’m more than two thirds of the way there and NOTHING. The scale has just stopped moving. (And I know it works this time!) Except now that I’ve gotten used to seeing the numbers drop, it’s SO much harder to stick to it without that motivation. And since I’ve undone most of the health problems I had, the motivation of feeling better isn’t really there either, since I consistently feel good now and it’s hard to remember how bad I used to feel. Even when I have junk food days now, my body is so much better equipped to handle it that I just bounce back and don’t really feel the after effects of it enough to keep me from snacking anymore. Especially since now that I’m so close to my goal weight, it’s easier to justify a late-night snack or bit of junk food that I wouldn’t have allowed myself back when my scale wasn’t working and I was just desperate to get unstuck from my state of perma-fat.
Anyways, I don’t really know what this post is. Could be a cry for help, or just a vent of frustration. I’ve heard of plateaus before and I know they’re a thing that happens, but I didn’t realize just how hard they are mentally.
Without the quick, constant changes in the direction I like (lol), it is SO hard to be happy with myself or focus on anything else except for where I can cut more calories or what I’m doing wrong this time. Except that this time, I’ve already made all the changes I can make- anything I cut out now just tips me into “unhealthy” dieting strategies, which inevitably leads me to binge later. Either way, I’m frustrated, unhappy, and the scale still isn’t moving.
I wish I could go back to when I was still naive and thought I could use my scale on the carpet. It took so much of the numbers game out of the equation and made it easier for my weight loss to stay in the background as more of a lifestyle change, rather than the sole focus of my life. But I can’t take my weight out of the equation anymore. Now that I know that I can lose weight, I’m just not, it’s making me hate myself and dieting altogether.
I’m also a little worried that if I’m this unhappy now, how am I gonna feel when I do actually hit my goal weight? (If I ever even do get there at this point, lmao.) I’ve gotten hooked on the feeling of losing.
I love dieting. I love the process of losing weight. This whole journey has given me focus, and confidence. I posted on here a couple days ago about losing motivation and the advice I got was mostly to just eat at maintenance for a while and reset.
And while I do think that’s good advice, I HATED doing it. I hated how much it felt like I was eating. I hated the lack of self-discipline, how it felt like I was giving up rather than pushing myself to just get through this last little bit and finish something for once in my life. I hate how indulgent it feels. And I hate the pressure of it - if I go a little bit over my calorie limit while it’s set to losing, I know that it’s not enough to gain weight, or most of the time to even maintain so I would still be losing, just slightly less. But when it’s set to maintenance, I know that that’s a hard limit. If I go over, I’m not still losing or maintaining - I’m gaining. So when I do get close or occasionally go over, it’s so much easier to get discouraged and completely give up, and binge. Which leads to me hating myself even more, and the spiral starts again. And all of this has made me realize... I never want to maintain. And I don’t really know how that’s gonna work out in the long run, because I also don’t want to end up as a skeleton. That’s not a good look for me. So... yeah, there’s that.
So now I’m trying to lose again but it’s just not working. And maintaining also isn’t working. And I really don’t want to gain. And overall I’m just frustrated and don’t know what to do and long story short I HATE PLATEAUS. I thought losing weight would make me feel better, and that when I hit my goal I would be more confident with myself and the way I look. But the closer I get, the less happy I am. (Especially now that I’ve stopped getting closer, lmao.) Everyone talks about how much better they feel once they’ve lost the weight. No one told me this would happen.
If you’ve read this far, thanks for bearing with me. Also, wtf should I do? How do I get back on track in a healthy, sustainable way, like it was before I figured out how to use the stupid scale?
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