A Perspective on Stalls and Gains

Below is another post I made on VST but am making here too for documentation puposes and for anyone who reads this who is not a part of the VST boards.

First of all, I'm only 9 weeks and 2 days out so the perspective I'm offering here is what I call the "newbie stall or gain" and not the stalls and gains of those of you get who are much farther out than me and a lot of us I see post about stalls.

Since being released to eat soft foods, my diet has pretty much been the same.  I usually eat 600 to 800 calories a day and for the most part, my intake is closer to the 800 calorie mark than it is to the 600 calorie mark.  I weigh everyday, but only record my weight on my blog every Monday.  When I weighed in on Monday July 30th, the scale showed a gain of two pounds from the prior Monday's weigh in.  I had done nothing different that I could pinpoint as the cause of this gain.  I wasn't happy about it, but knowing that it sometimes happens, I moved on from focusing on it.  Throughout that week, I continued to weigh everyday as I normally do.  The scale would show I was up one day and down one day but it wouldn't consistently go down.  I was gaining and losing the same 3 pounds all week.  When I weighed on Saturday my scale said 261.8.  That is only .6 lower than my previous Monday's weigh in.  I thought surely I was in for a little loss or a gain again in 2 days when I weighed in and recorded that weight.  Sunday, though when I weighed the scale showed me losing 5.6 pounds overnight.  It shoked me so much that I weighed 4 more times just to make sure it wasn't my scale going bonkers and yep, I'd "lost" 5.6 pounds overnight.  I wasn't sure though that it would stick.  I was hopeful, but doubtful.  Then came Monday morning.  I woke up, peed and hopped on the scale afraid of what I'd see.  The scale showed exactly 1 pound heavier from Sunday's weigh in but it gave me a weight loss of 5.2 from the previous Monday's weigh in.  It felt really good to put that in my blog considering the week before I had to put a 2 pound gain.  Anyway, on to this week.  So Monday, I weighed 257.2.  On Tuesday, I weighed 255.6.  I'd lost 1.6 pounds overnight and was down 49 pounds total.  Yay!  On Wednesday, I weighed 254.8.  Another loss this time in the amount of .8 overnight.  I was now only .2 pounds away from hitting the 50 pound mark.  And all that brings me to this morning.  I got on the scale and it said 253.2.  Wow!  I couldn't believe it.  I'd lost again overnight.  This time 1.2 bringing me to a total of 51.40 pounds gone forever.

So, my point to this is you have to look at the whole picture of weight loss and not just what happened today or over the past week or two or three.  The week I gained 2 pounds was no different than this week where I've lost 4 pounds in only 3 days.  I've been very consistent with my program and there just is no logical reason for what has occurred.  Okay, yes there probably is but it is probably stuff a scientist would have to explain and we wouldn't understand anyway unless of course one of us here is a scientist.  Anyway, I know that sometimes it is hard to look beyond what is going on at the present, but we really need to sometimes in order to keep our sanity.  Stalls and gains will happen and we will hate every minute of them but when we step back and look at the overall picture, it will look a lot better than what is going on in the present.

I hope I've offered some insight to those of you struggling with a stall or gain right now and that it will give the ones of you who haven't expreienced this some comfort when you finally do.