Skip to main content

Day 38 - Beck Diet Solution, Deal With A Plateau


As nice as it would be for the scale to continuously go down every week, normal weight loss doesn’t work that way.  It’s normal for the scale to stay the same or even go up some weeks.   But if you hit a plateau that lasts a few weeks or longer, it’s time to reevaluate what you’re doing and see if you need to make some changes to your weight loss plan.  BDS suggests four options:

1.     Stick with your current plan and see if the scale goes down next week;
2.    Eat 200 calories less per day (check with your doctor first);
3.    Exercise 15-20 minutes longer per day; or
4.    Decide you’ve reached your final goal weight and move into maintenance.

You’ll occasionally reach plateaus even if you’ve been doing everything right.  Expecting to lose weight each and every week sets you up for failure.  But there’s no reason you should have to remain at a standstill for say, three weeks or longer, unless you want to stay at that weight.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day 22 - Beck Diet Solution, Say “Oh Well” To Disappointment

Inigo Montoya: Who are you? Man in Black: No one of consequence. Inigo Montoya: I must know... Man in Black: Get used  to disappointment. Inigo Montoya: 'kay. The Princess Bride (20th Century Fox 1987) Just as Inigo shrugs off the disappointment of the Man in Black’s declining to reveal his identity and gets right back into the duel, so too must we shrug off those discouragements that go hand-in-hand with losing weight and keep truckin’ down the weight loss trail.   It’ll go easier for us if we do.  What if we just lay around bellyaching about how horrible it is that we can’t have that donut, can’t eat/drink exactly what everybody else does at parties, can’t just open the fridge and eat whenever we felt like it?  How much would we really accomplish that way?  Even if we do stick to our plans for a little while under that mindset, we’d be fighting an exhausting battle with ourselves every day and eventually give in.  Even the patience an...

Day 18 - Beck Diet Solution, Change Your Definition of Full

Sacha Chua via Flickr Naturally-thin people are usually good at the skill of eating to the point of normal fullness.  In general, this means being just as able to take a brisk walk after a meal as before the meal.  Eating past fullness doesn’t feel normal to thin people – it feels uncomfortable to them, says BDS.  But for people with weight problems, this overfull sensation may actually feel normal for a number of reasons – wanting to prolong the eating experience, taking advantage of food being around, wanting to load up to avoid being hungry between meals, and so on. If you’re worried about getting hungry before your next meal, just remember what we’ve learned about hunger – that it’s never an emergency and that we can withstand the sensations.  We have plenty of distractions and anti-craving techniques at our disposal to deal with cravings as well.  If you’re triggered to eat more because there’s food sitting around, like at a dinner or party, you c...

The Ogre

By Joseph Jacobs John Dickson Batten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Shelley and I were friends almost immediately.  However her father did not like me.  The only reason I can imagine is that my family was too poor for him and that he did not consider me fit to be around his daughter.  Despite how her father felt about me, the moments when he was away at work as a lawyer, and when Shelley and I were together were the thrill of my life.  We did everything for fun, it seemed like there was nothing we couldn't do, no fun that we couldn't have.    Her house was an entire wonderland within itself.  An enormous granite-walled mansion, there were four floors of enchanting adventure for us.  The first floor held a kitchen where we made all kinds of goodies, an adjacent playroom where we played house, Barbie, watched "It's A Living," "Silver Spoons," "Small Wonder," "Dukes of Hazzard," "Laverne & Shirley," two mag...