the ups and downs of weight loss

The shrinkage woman, at my last appointment, drew me a little picture of how people gain weight. It was just a little line chart of showing how most people gain some, then the line goes flat as they stay there, then gain some more, then lose some, then stay the same, then gain some, stay the same lose some, gain some, you know, so you get this line across the paper that, although it goes up and down, there is a steady upwards motion that you can see. Something like this:

Then she turned that paper so the line was going from the highest point, to the lowest point now. This is how you lose weight, the same way you put it on. You lose some, you plateau, you gain a little, you lose some more, you plateau, maybe you gain more than a little, then you lose some more... but in the end, you can see where is a downward movement to your goal weight.

Now what she told me wasn't news to my ears, I had heard variations of that statement a hundred times over, but there was something to it that stuck with me. I think it's the visual of seeing what she meant rather than just hearing "you didn't gain it in a day and you won't lose it in a day" statement.

She's asked me to post that chart somewhere so that it's in my visual line daily. I haven't done that yet but will at some point. I don't want to put it on the fridge because I think it send me a negative message of "don't look in here otherwise you'll never reach that goal" which isn't true. Everybody has to eat! Maybe a better spot is on the wall above my scale so it can remind me that no matter what the number says, I am on that little roller coaster of weight loss and the ride is going to end up exactly where I expect it to... the finish line!

I hope you all are having healthy, successful weeks!