It's Not Monday Anymore. Now It Shall Only Be Called GAINZday.

I'm still out of my stall, and making GAINZ, though at a rate slower than I'd hope for. Apparently I lost six pounds of pure fat since late August, and I imagine most of that was lost since late September (when I broke my long, long depressing, dispirting stall).

I guess: Just stick with it? That's what I kept telling myself as I made ZERO GAINZZZ and even some LOZZEZZ. I kept telling myself: Stick with it. It has to work. It's basic math. Well, not math, but like math: It's biochemistry that certainly seems to have to work. It worked before. You're in a stall now, but it worked before: the principle is sound, then, it seems. But your body is in revolt: It has a set weight the hypothalamus wants it to be at, and it is fighting tooth and nail to go no lower than this resistance point. (And this has always been my resistance point, through several rounds of weight loss.)

You just have to ride this disheartening period of NO GAINZZ out, I kept telling myself.

I think it worked. I think I broke the resistance point, and maybe set a new one five pounds lower.*

We'll see whether this mantra can get me through my next scheduled stall.

When you're not seeing any GAINZZ, it really does kill your resolve. Why bother trying if you're continuing to fail?

Of course, even when I was stalled as far as pure weight loss, I had other GAINZZ I was sort of ignoring. I was dropping clothing sizes. Old pants look increasingly silly on me, with the belt all cinched in tight. I could physically see that I was leaner.

Anyway, when I began this thread months ago, I mentioned to not just get your validation from one or two sources; look for multiple indicators of success. The scale can swing one or two pounds in either direction based on how well hydrated you are, for example. If you just look at the one marker, that one marker can show no GAINZZ, and thus break your spirit.

But when you're on the lookout for five or six markers -- not just weight, but caliper-measured bodyfat percentage, waist, hip, and chest circumference (yeah I know both men and women want bigger chests, but anyone with weight troubles know that there's often undesirable padding in the measurement), and, importantly, how you look by the simple eye test and how you feel -- you're much more likely to see a GAIN somewhere in that stack, and therefore get the validation and positive feedback which, let's face it, unless you have an iron willpower and Tom Cruise-level of self-mastery, you're going to need if you're going to keep this up for more than a couple of months.

Two months is easy. Then it gets hard. Just like marriage, just like keeping a kidnap victim in your basement.

So: 1, I need to know your GAINZZ, and 2, I'd especially like to hear if anyone's in a stall, and even more especially, if anyone's gotten through a stall, and what you did to get those GAINZZ back again.

* I gotta tell you I was also feeling like a total asshole running this thread while also being in a five or six week stall. It was getting so bad I really did consider if the Greater Good would be served if I straight-up lied to everyone and said I made GAINZZ I hadn't actually made -- like, not to make myself look good (who cares, honestly) but just so as not to sabotage anyone else's resolve by telling them "Stick with your dreams if you like, but in the end, it shall all come to naught, as it has for me. You're better off not even trying. You'll lose the first twenty easy pounds -- gimmes, really -- and then guess what? Then you start going after the hard weight, and the GAINZZ store shuts down and closes forever."

You know, "Ozymandias" is just ancient Greek for "Fleeting GAINZZ."

(By the way -- 20 pounds is my level of easy weight loss. Depending on how overweight you are, you'll have higher or lower easy-to-lose weight. The closer you get to a normal weight, the harder each additional pound of fat is to lose. When you get down to sub-normal-levels of fat -- like going for a really athletic 8% bodyfat build -- each ounce of fat becomes harder and harder to shred off. If you're very heavy, you might have 35-40 of easily-shed weight. If you're already closer to being at normal weight, you might lose five of the easy pounds and then have nothing but hard pounds left.)

posted by Ace at 05:24 PM

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