Stall Warning

Source.

When you fly a plane, if you try to climb too fast or you change your angle of attack (how aggressively the wing attacks the air) too suddenly, you create a stall. Depending upon your plane, you will get a nasty buzzing noise or the computer freaks out and starts yelling at you.

Unfortunately, stalls are also a part of weight loss, but they don’t come with a warning. They can happen after you try something specifically stupid, like pushing yourself too hard to hit a target. Possibly someone you know (or are reading about) has done this recently. Possibly someone who looks a lot like me.

Yes, I was stupid. In my race to make 230 lbs on January 1 (which I managed, which got me hundred pounds weight loss in eight months) I kind of pushed it a little hard. Unfortunately, the human body doesn’t play fair, and doesn’t give mulligans.

So I have spent the last two weeks at around 230 pounds. It’s frustrating to get on the scale and see that it really hasn’t moved, but I also realize that this is my body paying me back. I pushed hard for something, and I got it, but there is a cost with pushing that hard.

So I’m trying to be good, trying to stay hydrated and making sure I eat enough. It’s funny, in my ninth month of doing this, I am struggling to eat enough calories each day. Other than occasional psychological cravings for certain foods (Golden Double Stuf Oreos are particular repeat offender) I am really not interested in eating.

Part of that may be stress. Some of you may know, some of you may not, but I am no longer a part of the team at Price Chiropractic Center. I now have my own small practice which I am looking to expand. There is a lot of stress that comes with that, a lot of fear and a lot of action in spite of fear. Unfortunately, stress releases a lovely little hormone in our bodies called cortisol, and cortisol causes you to gain weight, or at least makes it very difficult to lose it.

So I realize between my shenanigans up to January 1, and the added stress load since December 30, weight loss for me right now is going to be a little bit difficult.

This is when the WHY is so important. Anyone who has heard me speak on weight loss will tell you that I have a firm belief that you need a WHY, as well as a HOW.

Whenever people ask me about weight loss, they invariably ask me how I did it. I always tell than that asking HOW is the wrong question. The most important question is WHY did I do it.

If you’re not motivated to lose weight, it doesn’t matter how you could lose weight, because you are not going to. You have to be motivated, you have to want it, and then you have to build that want, turning it into a desire, into a hunger, into a determination, and finally into an obsession.

You don’t lose 100 pounds of weight without getting determined. There have been many times in the last 8 ½ months where I could have failed. I haven’t. I have stayed on this new way of eating, even to the frustration of friends and family. And I stay on that because I have a very strong WHY.

So even in this stall, which is frustrating and probably a result of my going for it, I’m staying focused and determined.

Hopefully I’ll break through this stall soon, but if it lasts a while, so be it.

Next goal is 200. Hoping to be there by May 1.