On 28th March I got down to 119 kilos flat (massively dehydrated) and had a fry-up, which I blogged, obvs.
And I promised myself I would blog weekly on the weight loss.
Oops.
I didn’t blog last week, and since then I have only got under 120kg twice (so maybe it was an artefact?)
HOWEVER, you have to take the long view, you have to not use failure to keep your promises as an excuse not to make new promises and try to keep those.
So here we are.
Things to be proud of:
Today I did 12 laps of Alex Park, non-stop (well, except for feeding Fred the dog, obvs). This was with my >10kg weighted jacket and my 21-ishkg of bricks and weights in the backpack) That took 5 and a half hours. I talked into my voice recorder for exactly 300 mins and 53 seconds of those. Some of the words will even have been useful, not just exhortation and recrimination. The poor Otter software is working on it right now (when Skynet takes over, I will be hunted down and terminated for having subjected AI to the torture of listening to my brain vomit. I just hope it’s quick.)
This was my sixth park yomp since then, and means I did 44 laps in the last two weeks. Which isn’t bad.
But no weight loss.
Various ways to think about this.
- Could wonder if I have been on some eating binges, or drinking binges. Nope, not really.
- Have I put on loads of muscle? No – a bit on my biceps, pecs, lats, but I am not exactly a condom stuffed with walnuts, to use Clive James’ immortal description of the 1980s Aahnold.
- Have my leptins kicked in, and my body is simply resisting getting below a weight it hasn’t been below in probably about 15 years (or more?)
Yes. Probably this third one. Weight loss has your hypothalamus going “wait, are we entering a famine? Better change the metabolism so that if that happens I ain’t a stick insect.” Which makes a lotta sense, from a Darwinian perspective. If weight loss were easy, everyone would be doing it….
What do I do about it?
- I remind myself that it took many years to gain all this weight, and if I want to shed it and keep it off, then that doesn’t happen in a linear fashion or indeed easily.
- I keep buggering on. I maybe scale up the between-yomp walks (with less weight on me).
- Keep at the muscle bulk stuff – it will help with my resting metabolic rate, and anyway I want to be stronger (pull-ups?) so need lats and pecs..
- Actually properly read some of the various articles I’ve collected and skimmed, and turn them into “looting the ivory tower” blog posts and images.
Oh, my BP seems sorted – 121/77. This is a vast improvement on where it was in October 2019 (when I was 150kg).
So, this time next week, I will have done a lot more yomping (and talking to myself – sorry Mr/Ms Otter AI) and some reading. Ideally I will be coming in at 118 kg, and this plateau will be thing of t’past.
marchudson.net 
I don’t know why I am sending this, because I’m sure you are aware of the ‘plateauing’ effect in weight loss. Mind you, it isn’t helped by fryups 😊
I think plateaux are sent to try us, and you just have to persist, trying not to indulge in actions which are completely counter to achieving your goals, but it you do, put it behind you and just keep going.
You’ve shown such determination so far. You will achieve your goals.
Margaret Lee
Thanks Margaret! Yes, this is a time for sheer bloody-mindedness and persistence… Physiologically speaking, my body is resisting what I want it to do, in ways that scientists have been getting better at understanding.. I hope to read some articles on this in the coming weeks/months (around endocrine system, hormones etc). All best wishes, Marc