I give up. I absolutely give up when it comes to weight loss.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving up on continuing losing weight. I’m giving up on understanding anything at all about the process.
I think I need to back up a bit and explain.
A few weeks ago, I’d kind of screwed up and took in too many calories per day. I still lost weight, so I decided to modestly increase my calories to 1,400 calories per day.
Things kinda stuck there that week, which was fine. My plan this week was to stick at that level for another week and see if I could figure out what the deal was.
But then I had some personal drama that affected me way more than it should have and I felt pretty down. That depressed feeling tore away at my willpower and set the stage for this week.
And it was not shaping up to be a good week.
My target was 1,400 calories per day. I’ve found that to be a respectable amount of food, especially if you plan well.
However, because of the depression, I went way over calories on a few days, so much so that it was difficult to “make up” on the deficit. I’ve finished the week not with the 1,400 calories or thereabouts I planned, but with 1,514.6 calorie average.
This wasn’t good, especially since I didn’t really work out over the last couple of weeks–which, I admit, may also have played a factor in my lack of weight loss the previous week–and while I cut calories yesterday to try and salvage something of the week, I was still surprised.
You see, I dropped 0.8 lbs this week.
Well, technically, I guess I dropped 0.8 lbs yesterday.
The thing is, weight loss isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. It’s about averages and things like that. Also, it’s how you can splurge for your kid’s birthday party and eat that massive piece of cake, but still maintain weight loss over the long haul.
Yet, my average was too high for the week. They were 114.6 calories higher than the week before when I only lost 0.2 lbs. This despite getting in a grand total of one workout.
I don’t have a damn clue what happened.
But I do have a couple of potential hypotheses.
For one thing, its possible that the erratic calories sort of confused the metabolism and spiked it up somehow.
It’s also possible that my modest increase in calories up to 1,400 wasn’t really enough to accomplish anything with regard to the reverse diet, so by taking it so many more calories this week, I gave it far more.
None of those really feel right. It sounds like trying to rationalize things, looking for justification on the surface rather than really understanding what’s going on.
And honestly, I don’t understand what’s going on. I just don’t.
I mean, I’m happy with it but confused.
Unfortunately, I now need to determine what to do next. Do I stick at 1,500 calories or bounce it up a touch to 1,550? Try 1,600 because 100 calorie jumps do seem to be beneficial?
Honestly, I just don’t know.
At this point, I give up pretending to have the first damn clue at what I’m doing. Maybe this means I’m much further along the Dunning-Kruger Effect than I was. Maybe it just means I’m recognizing I’ve been lucky as hell.
Again, who knows.
What I do know is that it’s time to keep up the work. I’ve got about 22 lbs to go to reach what I think is my ideal body fat percentage (shooting for about 10 percent just now).
That means there’s still a lot of hard work ahead, but I’m reaching the point where things start to get tricky for a lot of people. The last 15-20 lbs are apparently the hardest, and that’s about where I’m at, so it’s time to start digging in and seeing what all can be done.
Not that I have a clue either way, apparently, but so long as I’m still making progress, I don’t care.
