Weight Loss is Never A Straight Line

Many of my clients believe that weight loss should happen in a straight line. You hit the gym. Eat less calories and eat well, and the scale will reflect a lower number. A tit-for-tat trade.

For some lucky people, it might be the way it happens. Most of us will have ebbs and flows much like anything in life- periods of numbers going down on the scale, then up, then plateau. Up and down it goes.

It can be frustrating at best. It can make us obsessed with pushing harder or question whether we should keep trying. This is the moment that matters. Do you throw in the towel or do you keep pushing forward? For those of you stuck in an all-or-nothing thinking approach, you will throw in the towel, often too early, and sabotage any progress you made by reverting to old patterns and continuing to feel defeated and not worthy. For those that keep pushing forward with a working plan, they recognize that scale weight is not a tit-for-tat trade for the work you put in.

Logically, we understand that it takes 3500 calories to equal a pound of weight loss. In theory, if you eat 500 calories less per day that should equate to 1 pound lost each week. In theory-not in practice. We have this thing called metabolism that likes to sometimes take its own time and dictate when it will happen. Your body likes to keep a certain equilibrium and is very good at resisting change. This is why you tend to gain those extra pounds very slowly without even noticing it over time. Your body can resist weight gain as much it can resist weight loss.

When you try to lose weight fast through strict dieting and an intense exercise schedule, your body pushes your brain to find food. This is why you can’t stop thinking about it and obsession creeps in. Mental power goes out the window. Your mind and body become exhausted, your thoughts crazy, random and obsessive and your emotions are on a wild roller coaster ride. Getting really lean and only having body goals, isn’t’ as sexy as what magazine cover models lead you to believe.

You can weigh yourself everyday, yet you won’t lose a pound each time. ‘When’ those pounds come off, isn’t something I or anyone can predict. Let’s also consider the emotional impact the scale has on us; Is weighing yourself everyday helping or hurting your progress? If it makes you feel bad about yourself, call yourself names or throw in the towel all together, then it isn’t doing you any service to jump on that scale everyday. There are other non-physical indicators of success to measure progress and a shift in measuring your daily habits and behaviours will prove more worthwhile.

It is a hard truth to accept that you could be doing everything right and the weight loss might not happen right away, might stall out and sometimes even head in the wrong direction. This can make us feel like we are in a constant struggle, not trying hard enough and feel like a failure. If you can weed through the mental clutter, then you can understand it is part of the process.

I’m here to tell you that weight loss is squishy. I graphed my 1-year journey to highlight my start- my peak and then back to my normal, healthy weight. You can see there is nothing straight about this line. But from these pictures you can see overtime it amounted to big changes.

When you look at things this way, zoom out to look at the bigger picture, you can see little fluctuations and stalls in weight loss, but the trajectory kept moving in the right direction. You can keep your eye on the day-to-day progress but never at the expense of your longer-term trajectory.

In July 2018, I got down to my lowest weight ever for a fitness competition. It really was a means to an end and having spent 5+ years working on myself and my relationship with food, I was eager to get back to myself, living life and finding my normal again. Sure, having spent a large part of my life trying to lower that number on the scale and seeing it increase was a bit hard, but staying as lean as I was, with as many trades as I needed to make wasn’t a quality life worth living for me. I learned several things through this journey that were all very consuming. I trained hard and was on a very restrictive diet. Hunger, exhaustion and moodiness all came in waves toying with my emotions from being OK to being emotionally tapped out.

It is OK to have body goals, but it is also OK to have strength goals and other goals like career and relationship goals. Your body is really the least interesting thing about you, yet it holds centre stage for a lot of us. A wise dietitian once told me it was OK I didn’t believe her at first because they had always been about my body. But something in me, knew despite the many changes in my body, I wasn’t happy living in it. When I shifted to thinking about small improvements in health habits and strength goals, it was like my whole world shifted. But you know what was most amazing? When I made this shift- the long-term, dedicated effort to just living healthier and letting go of body goals, changes happened, without all the dieting craziness.

All this to say that the journey to weight loss is never a straight line. If you can wrap your head around that, then you can start focussing on taking the long view.

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All Out Training exists to help young moms and dads frustrated with their fitness levels and those with an unhealthy relationship with food to develop the skills needed to maintain a healthier lifestyle so they can lose weight, move better, feel stronger have more self-confidence and ultimately feel their best. We are anti-dieting. We do this through our classes, online coaching programs and downloadable programs and resources.

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