Eating Clean and The Dreaded Plateau.

In search of some kind of relief from this weight loss plateau I've been having I've been reading and buying all sorts of books for inspiration. Almost eight weeks of skimming 140-142 after being down to 137 on a great week were tough...

I've turned to a semi-diet guru and a fitness guru for my last push to get down that last ten pounds. Which is much harder than I anticipated it would be, as well as how hard I was warned it would be.

I went to the bookstore, I looked at all the fitness books they had. I was stumped as to where to go. So I chose the woman with the physique I'd most like to have. While I think this is strange, it's kind of nice to have something to aspire too. There's also a girl at the gym who works out on Monday nights with me that is also some quasi-inspiration as well. Also strange to me, but hey, I have to have goals.

So I chose Jillian Michaels. You may know her from the Biggest Loser. And despite my participation in a namesake program at the YMCA, I've seen the show for ten minutes once in my life. I was unfamilar with her and her style of fitness.

So I bought Making the Cut and read it and was intrigued by the excersises and learned some fun new things to do with my balance ball and free weights. Now I'm waiting for 30 Day Shred to come in the mail so that I can feel more confident in doing some of the excersises. I'm definitely a visual person so seeing someone else do it is helpful.

The diet part was hard. I had become so restrictive and rigid with the structure and content of my diet that I think it was the main cause of my plateau. I kept cutting back and taking away more, depriving myself of food. I wasn't helping any cause and I was gaining weight and probably losing some of the muscle mass I had built. Who knew I had to eat more to lose weight?

I guess it comes back to the breakfast principle. Eat more, lose weight. Eat less, stay the same or gain weight.

I found a book that seemed to follow the principles I set for myself in the way I reinvented the way I eat. It's called Clean-Eating. I like to compare to Atkins only in basic principles and then add a heap of common sense and good nutrition.

It's a protein based diet that doesn't deprive you of whole grains and complex carbohydrates. Instead the protein and the whole grains work together to ramp up your metabolism along with excersise and you burn fat naturally.

I was skeptical! But following the diet for about a week and drinking plenty of water I'm definitely seeing a change in the scale and in my weight. Dropping the last bits of sugar and processed flour from my diet and eating more protein I lost about five more pounds. So I broke my platuea.

Yes, it's extreme. But I have to rethink things now that I'm more fit. I need something that's more of a life plan than a diet.

I gave up diet soda almost two weeks ago and I haven't looked back. I still have my coffee though. Sadly I need it to live! But I did give up the last bastions of granulated, refined sugar and switched to agave nectar. And by now I'm using less and less of that. So eventually (maybe) I'll be able to kick this sugar habit for good.

That's it for now! I'm trying to update more for my own records. Not that anyone reads this anyways.

I'm totally guilty.

I neglected my weight loss blog tracking my progress. I didn't blog about my ups and downs. *sigh* I lied.

But!

I did manage to get to a working weight of 137.5 lbs. as of today!

Now how did I manage to go from my last posted weight of 172 down to 137.5 in since August? Hard work. Lots and lots of it.

I signed up for a personal trainer at the YMCA, and he showed me how to do weight training. Twelve weeks later I do three weight training sessions a week. Six days a week of cardio.

I spent twelve weeks building up the muscle strenght in my arms, legs, back and core. I spent most of that time walking on the treadmill burning fat at 4.0 mph. Now I run 5.5 - 6.0 mph on the treadmill for forty minutes a day.

I'm fully into yoga now. It was a hobby before, but now it's a lifestyle and a personal obsession for me. I'm involved in my practice three times a week in formal classes, and every day at home working on poses and learning more about myself.

I'm in sort of a weight loss plateau at the moment. I have been for five weeks. I'm hovering above and below 140 lbs. I'm working on beating the stasis and really getting down to my goal weight of 130 lbs.

My only fear about the weight loss is gaining it back. I always say that I was fat for so long and now that I've felt the confidence and energy of being thin and fit I never want to go back. I'm a tad troubled at what I would do to stay thin, but I don't think I've hit that point yet.

Food is good! I'm working on eliminating most of the meat from my diet and sticking to lean sources of protein. Also I'm working nuts, oils and dark chocolate back into my diet for their health reasons (although I'm struggling a little bit because of their calorie and fat content).

I think I'll start to post recipes here of things I've worked on and created.

I'll post some of my workouts for posterity. And some of my future goals and hopes for my fitness (like marathons! cycling! skiing! and various other intense things).