Plateaux

Plateaux are horrible. They sap motivation, leave you feeling irritable and resentful when you hop on the scales and see you're still wobbling up and down by a pound or so over your lightest weight in years, and are often the cause of a big splurge or just plain old giving up altogether.


So, why did I not give up? Six weeks of being anywhere from a quarter pound to a pound and a half over my lightest weight in years, and I stuck it out. Today I am 3 and a quarter pounds lighter than last week, and three pounds under my lightest weight in years. I weigh about the same as when I started university for the second time aged 22! (I gained a stone the fortnight before, on a very nice holiday. *g*)


Christmas and New Year helped. I had no real expectation of losing a great deal over those two weeks, and I weighed in a day early on New Year's Eve so I could have a bit of a splurge and just didn't worry about the points for that day. I still tracked them all - I consumed more than on Christmas Day! *lol*


My father always complained that, like him, I am a stubborn b*gger. It's true; I am so obstinate and pigheaded about what I want to achieve at times that I am pretty darn ruthless. I know what I want, and I get it. Usually by fair means. 


This last week, I've eaten breakfast every day. I've also been having a few of my weekly 49 every day, for a wee treat or just having a few more points of good, filling food than I can cover with my daily points. I don't normally eat breakfast, but this week I've been having an egg or two and a bit of bacon, with a couple of slices of toasted light bread. Or Oat So Simple with raisins and spices, made up with semi-skimmed milk (I ran out of skimmed milk, Germans don't seem to be big on it so locally I can only get 1.5% fat at best.) 


I've had a wee bit more alcohol than usual. Not excessively so; I bought a bottle of mocha Kahlua for NYE and have been having a couple of 25 ml measures of that some evenings. I keep forgetting to buy chocolate! I am very choosy about my chocolate. The commissary had no decent plain chocolate, so I didn't buy any yesterday. And the garage just had milk chocolate or the kind of Ritter Sport I don't care for. Couldn't be bothered going to Edeka, a local supermarket, to get some really good dark chocolate, so I went without!


I skipped the carbohydrate on a couple of lunches. I ate a dollop of hummus, home made, with half a bag of baby carrots instead of a sandwich or soup. 


I ate quite a bit of reduced fat cheese this week, too. In sandwiches, with my bacon and egg, in carbonara sauce. I made parsley sauce one night to go with the Danish fried belly pork slices. (You fry most of the fat out of them, and drain them on kitchen paper. Best done in the oven over a rack in the baking pan, as they spit fat all over the kitchen if you fry them!)


I had an evil upset stomach on Monday and Tuesday, but I still consumed my daily points and a little more. It's probably not good for you to do this, but crisps and digestive biscuits were all I wanted to eat, so I did. It soon passed.


I didn't get much exercise as a result of feeling lousy for three days. That said, I blitzed the cat boxes and their home in the basement, and ran up the stairs with nine black sacks of old litter. The DH usually takes those out for me, but I keep forgetting to ask him, so I did it. They were jolly heavy!


Anyway, it all added up to a three and a quarter pound loss. So pleased to be over that little hump! TOTM coming up in the next week or so, so I may well be back there again soon, but hopefully it will not hold me back too much. 


Don't lose heart if you have a plateau. You will always, always get past it. You just need to keep on plugging away at it. That's all I did; head down and carry on, and the weight comes off again e ventually.