The eXercise Factor

Ever had a great week, one where you followed plan, ate lots of fruits & veges, exercised your butt off, drank all your water, felt lighter, and actually LOOKED FORWARD to your weigh in? For me, these weeks are rare, so when I had one this past week, I headed to my Saturday weigh in with my head high.

Only to be CRUSHED by that dang scale.

To be fair, I *did* lose .... A whopping 0.4 lbs. But, definitely not what I wanted or expected. I tried to be positive, doing the old "That's 2 sticks of butter gone from your body"pep talk. But it didn't work. I felt like I can't do anything right.

So I texted my friend Andrea to complain. Turns out she had an even worse experience at the scale this week - she gained 1 lb and her story was similar: followed plan great, ate healthy, exercised like crazy.

We go to thinking then : what does exercise have to do with weight loss? We both earned more than 30 Activity Points that week - some serious working out for us. For me, the 33 points I earned included 2 times running at the gym and a crazy hills workout on the elliptical. By Friday my legs felt like a ton of bricks.

Did I overdo it? What is the correlation between strenuous workout and weight loss? Did I eat too many post-workout smoothies? What gives? This article on Shape helped reassure me a little bit, particlularly this line: The scale says nothing about your fitness level or body composition. So, maybe I didn't drop a bunch of weight this week, but I did run 6.3 miles in 1 week and felt GOOD about it. That's a good thing, right?

I'm not INTENTIONALLY being lazier this week, but I do have a bit more going on that will keep me from going to the gym. So I might get 2 runs and 1 elliptical workout in. I wonder if it will have an impact at the scale.

Then I think back to 2005 when I was a weight loss infant and joined WW for the first time. I weighed about 15 lbs more than I do now and had absolutely no trouble dropping 40 lbs in about 6 months. And you know what? I didn't work out one bit in that whole time. So, obviously focusing on diet is essential to losing weight! (However, I will say that as an infant of 25, my metabolism was revved up and ready to go. Now I feel like a middle-aged slug whose metabolism just WON'T.KICK.IN!)

So, goal for the week: focus on eating good-for-me food. Continue at the gym, but don't let THAT be the sole focus of the week. Track, track, track and drink my water. And PRAY to heaven that I'll drop some weight this week.

It's hard so to stay motivated when you don't see the success you hoped at the scale!