CHAPTER 12
Maintenance
Plateau
Oh,
my God--that dreaded word “plateau.” “I am on it and
I know that I will never lose any more weight”. “I have been
here before and I know that this is the end”. “I may as well
give up”. “I knew that it would happen and that I could not
achieve the goal I set”. “What am I to do?” “I
don’t want to quit, or do I?” Does this all sound familiar?
Well, it has happened to many of us over the years. We have all tried
to reach a goal and seem to run into an impasse: the question is how to
get past it?
The first--and
I think the most important thing--is to get rid of the negative talk that
you are engaging in. That will not help you. You don’t need to keep
hearing “I can’t” and “I knew I couldn’t.”
We have to get “can’t” out of the thought process. We
need a change in mindset. Some will point out that this is easier said
than done. Well, that is probably true—but you can succeed if you
try.
When you find
the negative talk going on in your head, try to think of something funny
or some pleasurable time. Think of the beach, the mountains, or whatever
makes you feel good. Get away from the negative thoughts that are going
on in your head. Sure, the first few times it may be difficult, but if
you practice doing it you will find that it is easier than you think.
Well, now you are starting to get the negative thoughts out and the positive
ones in--so what? That did not help you lose one pound.
Now that the
negative chatter is quieting down, we need to focus on what will change
the plateau. What is a plateau? We all know that it is a flat surface,
or in this case a weight pattern that is flat--you are not losing weight.
From all that you have read, I suspect that you know what has to be done
to correct this problem, but I will go over the mental exercise.
If you are
in a plateau, that means you are eating exactly the amount of calories
that you are burning up. If you were eating more than you were burning,
then you would have extra to store and you would be gaining weight. If
you were eating less than you are burning, then you would not be on a
plateau--you would in fact be losing weight.
So we have some choices. Do you want to change your goal? It is your goal
after all, and you have the right to change it. If you lost some weight,
you may have already made significant improvement in your overall health.
You may have already lowered your blood pressure or your cholesterol.
You may have already toned up some of your muscles and you are much more
fit than you were before. So there is nothing wrong with changing your
goals, if that is what you want to do. If you do change them and you are
now at your new goal, then that is great. It is good to reach a goal.
That does not mean that backsliding is a good plan. It does require that
you recognize you have set a goal, perhaps a new one, but one nonetheless.
Let’s
say you have decided you still want to shoot for your original goal. You
are not there yet, but to be honest you have the ability to get there.
So you are on the plateau. Well, as I said earlier, that means you are
burning just as many calories as you are eating. That also means that
to begin losing weight again, there are only two options. One is to cut
down on what you are eating; the second is to find a way to increase what
you are burning. One person I know named Kathleen had been on a plateau
for 3 months and she was frustrated. The main reason that she was stuck
was that she had cut out one of her walks each day. She used to walk each
morning and evening and had lost 75 pounds. Now she was only doing one
walk a day and was on the plateau. What should she do? Well, Kathleen
thought that cutting back further on food was out of the question. That
only left her with one option: to restart her walking program. If she
were to add that two- mile walk back into her program again, then she
could be back on track to losing 2 pounds a month. Another problem was
that once she hit the plateau, she became frustrated and started cheating
more on the diet. She knew it, but did it anyway. Why not--the diet was
not working, so why not cheat? Well, it was not the diet that was not
working; instead, she was the one who was the culprit.
Some will
say: “There is no way I can increase my exercise program; I simply
do not have the time. I choose not to do any more exercise. I know that
I could cut out the TV program that comes on that I love, but I do not
love me enough so I am not going to do it. I choose to watch TV.”
For this person, the only way to get off the plateau is to decrease the
amount of calories or food that she is eating. She will have to look at
her weaknesses again and see if there are any foods that she missed before
that represent weaknesses she needs to get rid of. Did she replace one
weakness for another--is it now cookies instead of ice cream, or is it
soft drinks instead of cookies? If you can only cut 100 to 200 calories
out of the diet a day, then you have the ability to drop 1 to 2 pounds
a month. I hear the cry of “I can’t” again. This is
where you need to use your ingenuity and figure out a solution. What would
happen if you took your lunch to work with you and took two pieces of
fruit for a snack, would that work? It might; you won’t know unless
you try it. If you are already doing that, then what if you make one supper
a week of fruit and try to use a smaller plate at the dinner table, and
make sure that you wait at least 30 minutes after you finish your plate
before you get seconds or thirds. Look at your own situation and see what
you can change. Do you really need that bagel or cinnamon bun or glazed
donut on the way to work with your coffee? You already ate breakfast.
Listen to your stomach.
So now that
you are on the plateau you do have some decisions to make. What do you
want to do? You have already done a good job. There is nothing wrong with
accepting where you are and trying to simply keep the weight stable for
a year or so and then start again. There is nothing that says you have
to reach your goal in one setting. Very few wars are won with one quick
strike; it usually takes several battles--some won, some lost. It is the
final battle that really matters. You need to realize that this battle
is your battle and your burden. The only thing you should never do is
to quit. Do not quit unless you have simply given up and have said that
it is not important to me: I do not care about this body that God gave
me to care for. At that point, your time is probably getting short, and
your goals may simply be death with dignity.
What are you
going to do? I don’t know; that is up to you. I hope that as you
travel your journey, you learn all the things about life and yourself
that you are supposed to learn. This is, after all, your life. You get
to call the shots. You are the captain of your ship. You know where the
sandbars are and you know where the icebergs are; you can steer into them
or around them--that is your choice. Acknowledge that you are in control,
and choose what you are going to do. Then do it and accept the consequences
for good or ill, until you set a different goal.
Maintenance
You
have reached your goal. That does not mean that you are free to return
to your old ways, unless you want to get your old self back and the problems
that go with it. Maintaining your weight where you want it is a life-long
goal. If you ignore this reality, then you will be back to the yo-yo weight
loss and gain that you have experienced in the past. Knowledge is power,
but you have to implement your knowledge as well. Congratulations on hitting
your goal, whatever it was. Now you need to maintain it.
How do you
do that? Well, you already know that if you keep following your diet,
you will continue to lose 1-2 pounds a week. So that means you will need
to increase your intake by 100 to 200 calories a day. You can do that
any way you wish. The thing that you should not do is get some of your
weaknesses back in the house. If you do, you will find that you will increase
your intake by 500 to 700 calories a day and you will now start gaining
3-4 pounds a month. You won’t notice it for a couple months unless
you get on the scales regularly, which I hope you do. Other than increasing
your food intake by 100 to 200 calories a day, the other thing that you
could do--although I do not recommend it--is to cut back on your exercise.
The exercise that you are doing is helping to maintain your physical fitness
and will keep you limber and mobile. If you do not continue to walk, then
as you get older, you will be less likely to be independent. As we age,
most of us want to retain our independence and our mental acuity. Walking
can help us do both.
So you are
going to monitor your weight. I hope that you continue to do so on a regular
basis. Hopefully, you will monitor it on the same schedule that you have
been using in the past. For me it is daily. I get on the scales generally
6 out of 7 days. When I travel, I don’t weigh myself since most
hotels don’t provide scales in the room. Monitoring your weight
will allow you do deal with changes as they occur. If you see a 2 or 3
pound increase, you know how to deal with it. You know the drill; you
have been there before. It is easier to deal with 2 or 3 pounds than with
20 or 200. This is where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
As I said before, you will not know how fast you are driving if you do
not look at your speedometer. You will not know how you are doing with
your weight on a regular basis unless you monitor it with scales.
You need to
continue to look at your body composition every month as well. I hope
that you have acquired a set of scales that will tell you your percentage
of body fat. Weight is not the only thing that you need to think about.
You may keep your weight stable but you may lose muscle mass. If you do,
then your percentage of body fat will be increasing as your muscle mass
decreases. Body fat is important if one of your goals is to be healthy.
You need to go back and look at your goals and see if any of them need
to be changed. Is one of your goals to be healthy and to take care of
your body? If the answer is yes, then you do need to keep your strength
up and your muscles strong. I am not talking about being able to pump
iron necessarily, although some of you will be doing it. I mean that you
need to go for a walk on a daily basis. Hopefully, you have found that
this is relaxing and something that you enjoy.
So you have
decided to continue with the exercise or walking program that you have
started. Occasionally you will find that you may slip and all of a sudden
you are no longer doing the exercise. We can all find excuses not to walk,
but you need to get back into it as soon as you realize what has happened.
You also need to get on the scales because you will find that your weight
is creeping up and that you need to intervene. I injured my back once
from carrying luggage on a trip. That took me out of the exercise program
for 6 months. I had to modify what I ate in order to keep my weight where
I wanted it to be. I still got to eat out but I had to decrease my portion
size so that I could keep my weight stable. You will have to do the same
if you do not exercise. Once my back healed, I was able to resume some
of the jogging and weight lifting that I do.
Weight management
is a life-long journey. You can never go back to your old way of doing
things. If you don’t manage your weight, it will manage you. It
will be back and you will have lost the benefits that you had gained.
In the United States each year, 300,000 people die due to obesity. I have
seen people in their 30’s who suffered strokes and heart attacks,
brought on by being overweight. I hope that won’t or hasn’t
happened to you. The sad thing is that these patients of mine were not
able to deal with their weight problem and never did lose weight. Ultimately,
this killed them.
One patient,
Zelda, was a lady who never figured it out and died an untimely death
at 53. She was always a person who needed an illness, and we all know
people who want to be sick. When I first met her, she was 37 years old
and on 13 different drugs. I got her off all but three of the medicines,
and she did well for a while. With time, Zelda ended up seeing other physicians
and eventually got back up to 15 different drugs. She was 170 pounds and
5ft 5 inches tall, and being overweight was the major source of her health
problems. If she had lost weight, there was no question in my mind that
she could have been on less than half of her current medications.
Zelda had
a problem with blockages in her arteries that I am sure were aggravated
by her weight problem. She had to have bypass surgery, and also had blockage
to the arteries that led to her kidneys. In addition, Zelda had to have
one of the arteries to her brain cleaned out, and she did well with that.
Despite all these problems, and my discussions with her about the urgent
need for her to lose weight, she was never able to start a program of
weight reduction. I sensed she felt that the medical problems we discussed
would never happen to her, just to other people.
When Zelda
had a stroke, it resulted in a loss of speech and weakness in her right
arm and leg. Three days later, despite doing everything we could to prevent
it, she had another stroke. This time, it was a massive one, and she was
dead in six hours.
* * *
The motivation
to work on your health comes from within. You have the inner strength
to have control over this problem. You have reached some if not all of
your goals. That does not mean that you will not have new goals in life
as you go forward, but you did succeed in reaching some of your goals.
Just remember that the goals you set are yours and you can change them
as time goes on. Your goals need to be fluid; they need to be able to
evolve as you and your world change.
Congratulations! |
