madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2/22/02 With each passing day, that the scale remains the same, I grow more content with the numbers. After all, what else can I do? I cannot spend every day crying, being angry, frustrated, or pissed off about my plateau. I cannot change the outcome by eating more, or eating less. I cannot push myself harder in my exercise, as I�m spending a good hour a day on it already. So although I would welcome a sudden drop in the scale, it is becoming less important to me. It has to become less important in order for me to have a normal life. My scale has become my teacher, instructing me on the finer degrees of patience. I�ve never been a particularly patient person either - so perhaps this lesson is actually quite important for me to learn. I�m really trying to be an attentive student, truly. And I�m desperately trying to quiet the voice in my head that�s screaming, �You are never going to lose any more weight. This is it.� because I know its absurd. People are constantly telling me to quit relying on the scale as a measure of my success, to use measurements or clothes or just "how good I feel" instead. The problem with the whole "using my clothes" thing, is that I've only dropped from 30/32 to a 26/28 which is only one clothing size since I started!! So can you see how using my clothes wouldn't be very motivating? Its been 14 months and if I only had used my clothes as a tool for my success I would've quit long ago. In fact, my clothes have been a very sore spot for me because I feel I should be in a LOT smaller of a size by now... Taking actual measurements is something I plan on doing tomorrow, along with taking some more comparison pictures...hopefully that will help. The other thing people tell me is to measure my success by how "good i feel". The thing is - that I feel good all the time. And as the months go by, I really have a more difficult time remembering how bad I used to feel. I mean, feeling good is my normal now. I feel good most of the time. Its not like I feel a little better and better every single day, I just feel "normal" now. With regards to breaking this plateau...I've been lifting weights - although not as heavily as I�d like to yet. I hope this will change the shape and size of my body. I also do a LOT of step aerobics, and I take an aerobics class on Saturday mornings, and I've started riding a bike. So I have really tried to shake things up with regards to my exercise. I only walk on my lunch breaks for something "extra" which I add to my regular exercise routine, which sometimes totals up to 1 hour and 20 minutes. I've been eating more the past two weeks, but the scale hasn't budged. So, unlike my entry last week explained, I don't think that is the answer. I don't I may not be making much sense. But the bottom line is that you all are right, I've got to quit using the scale as my only measurement of success. I've used the scale for a year as my tool for measuring my success... as they say - old habits die hard. This is going to take some getting used to. If you had asked me, �Heather, what does fitness mean to you?� I probably would�ve said something like, �Fitness means being strong cardiovascularly and muscularly, eating healthy whole foods, and living an active life.� So when I ran across this quote explaining what fitness meant to this person, I was kind of surprised that I omitted one of the most important things.... �Fitness is a combination of cardiovascular health, muscle, health, strength, endurance, and a mental or spiritual state of being.� 1:54 p.m. - 2/22/02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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