Hello everyone 👋
Sorry, I’ve been quiet this week, I’ve had a vomiting bug which thankfully only lasted 24hrs but wiped me out a bit. On the plus side I’ve lost a couple of pounds and enjoyed catching up on all the posts this morning!
I guess my thoughts on weight loss stalls are that your body is at a weight set point when the scales don’t budge and I think that you’ve got to let your body work out that this weight is ok and stay there for as long as it takes, or now we can increase our MJ dose and see if that gets things moving again. Over the many, many, many 🥺 years I've been dieting, I've appeared to have set points of 13.5, 12st 10st 7lb and now 9st11lb. This has been over 35 years. In my 20s I was 13.5st and Ive never gone back up to that weight. There’s been a fair amount of yo yoing in that time but generally the trend has been downwards - mainly because I’ve realised that if I don’t get on the scales every day I will take my eye off the ball and put a stone or so back on. I’ve done this many times.
Ive also seen that exercise will cause a bit of inflammation and water retention and the day after exercise I’ll always be a bit heavier. Also if I’m actively working at putting on muscle with weight training or HIIT training etc, I must be losing fat if my weight stays the same! I spent quite a bit of time googling pictures of women who have gained muscle but lost fat and their weight is still the same but they look hugely different …. I’ll find a photo. So I think it’s important that we realise our body composition is changing.
Having said that, people who feel stuck and still have a bit to lose, are you able to increase your MJ dose at all? I’ve just increased mine back up to 4mg to try and get a few more lb off. I’m purely doing this because I want to increase my running speed and distance - it’s just soooo much easier to run when I’m lighter. Running really helps my mental health as well. I know we all want to keep our dose as low as possible for financial reasons and the side effects but I now know I can maintain on 2.5mg a week (not tried to stop completely) but I was losing on 4mg, so this is a little experiment to see what happens.
Regarding Christmas- I think this is the first year I’ve NOT worried about weight gain. I’m a bit miffed I’m spending a fortune on meals out with family where I won’t want to drink and won’t be able to eat all the food. MJ has turned me into one of those people who end up pushing food round my plate. Fortunately my skinny husband happily shovels my left overs away if we eat out! I would consider increasing my dose a little bit if I thought I’d fall back into bad habits though.
I think this is where we need to change our mindset from “I won’t enjoy Christmas if I can’t eat all the food” I was reading on another thread where people were having a week off MJ for holidays so that they could enjoy their food and drink. Surely this is the wrong way round? My mum used to feel an evening out was ruined if the food wasn’t good, despite the fact that her family were sat all around her! The food was more important than the company. She used to say that food was her only pleasure in life. That’s like addiction isn’t it? I don’t really know where I’m going with this 😂 just thinking out loud. It’s the dopamine hit - I do have it a bit with clothes shopping. If it wasn’t for Vinted and charity shops I might have a problem!
Anyway this post has turned into another essay so I’ll post it quick! Interesting things to think about though.. have a lovely week folks x