#90DayChallenge: The First 3 Weeks + Plateaus

I haven’t weighed in yet today (will do that tonight at before a weight training class), but I suspect I did this past week exactly what I did the week before — which is stay exactly where I was at the end of week 1 (down 16 pounds since April – yay! – but 0 pounds from two weeks ago – not-yay!). I know this both from the scale at home and from the experienced dieter’s spidey-sense: if you do this long enough, you know when you’re doing it right and when you’re phoning it in. Still, the past two weeks included both PMS and three (relatively) raucous nights out with friends, so I’m counting myself lucky that I didn’t gain any weight. [Here ends the rationalization].

Seriously, I promised I wouldn’t judge myself during this process, so I’m not. I am just noticing what happened and preparing to amp things up this week. I did track every day but one, and that was the day I was switching from my broken Android to my new iPhone–a major life transition, if you ask me–and I couldn’t consistently access my LoseIt app. I’m back up and running now, and here are the two mini-goals for this week: go to the gym every day (5 days in a row), and try out the Shakeology sampler I ordered from a friend. So far, so good on both counts.

Same difference, right???

I am noticing, the older I get and the more I do this, that being a serial diet-attempter works against me sometimes — especially combined with my ADHD tendencies to abandon things as soon as they get boring or tedious. I’ve tried lots of dieting approaches: Weight Watchers, Slimfast, etc.; and I’ve tried a variety of workout programs. Most of them work for a few weeks or a few pounds, and then I hit a plateau. Whether this is a physiological phenomenon or just human nature, I don’t know.

What I do know is that just 15 minutes of bad food-related behavior can cancel out 23 hours and 45 minutes of good food-related behavior, which seems patently unfair. It’s like my body doesn’t care that I was good all morning: Oreos are still Oreos. So by week 3 or month 3, those bad habits start sneaking back in, and then it feels like all the good stuff I’m doing is kind of pointless and why am I really doing this anyway?

This is usually the point at which I start making excuses, rationalizing, and pushing the hard stuff into next week. It’s where the line between “self-forgiveness” and “giving up” starts to get blurry. And later, when I’m back to struggling, someone will suggest Weight Watchers or low-carb or weight-lifting or tracking your food or drinking more water… and I can wave my chubby little wrist at them and say, quite truthfully, “Yeah, I tried that.”

It’s so much easier to know how to do something in theory than to actually do it, and do it consistently. Writing novels has taught me that — I’m much better at seeing the flaws in the work of others than I am at breaking through my own resistance to fix what’s wrong with mine. I’m much better at understanding calorie intake, target heart rates and sugar addiction than I am at changing my behavior. Theory is easy, execution is a bitch.

So I’m glad I’m doing this challenge at the gym, where there is some built-in accountability, and I’m glad I shared it with you guys, because that external motivation is helping me keep going even when my intrinsic motivation starts to weaken.

And, it’ll be back. 68 days to go!

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