Progress, or lack thereof....

Well friends, I have been at this new exercise and fitness quest for four weeks now.  Every week, I have gotten in a minimum of 45 minutes of good cardio-type exercise, five to six times a week.  Sometimes, especially on the weekends, my walks can go on for an hour and half to two hours.  I have been alternating between the elliptical trainer, walking and swimming, but the bulk of my workouts have been spent on the elliptical trainer and walking.  This week was no exception.  I had a beach walk on Saturday.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I spent a minimum of 50 minutes on the elliptical trainer each day and Friday I tool a three mile beach walk over the course of 90 minutes and yesterday I took a four mile beach walk in just under two hours.  I have counted calories religiously every day.  So why won’t the freaking scales budge?????  Well, actually, they do budge – up and down, the same 2-3 pounds every couple of days, but no lower than the initial 5 pounds that I lost in the first 10 days.  What gives here????    Just two short years ago I undertook a mission to lose weight and I walked five days a week and watched my calories, and presto!  I lost weight!  Now, two years later, the same diet and exercise regime isn’t cutting it.  And the funny thing is, the day after I took my one day break from exercise and ate a little bit more than my daily allotted calories, I showed a loss on the scale.  I just don’t get it, folks!!  Where is the justice in that?

So, it was time for me to study up on this a bit and the results were surprising. I’ve done my research and it looks like I am not eating enough, thereby slowing my basal metabolic rate even further than it’s already abysmally slow rate.  When you take in too few calories, your body goes into starvation mode and slows down the metabolic rate in order to conserve calories for basic functions.  According to my research, between my calorie restriction and the amount of exercise I am getting in each day, I am not meeting my daily necessary calories to maintain my current basal metabolic rate.  Seriously????  It seems to me that should equate to weight loss, but apparently not.  I don’t get it, though.  How come all of those contestants on Survivor, who really are starving, end up looking anorexically thin?  Gah!!!

So, dear friends, I am going to try a little experiment this week.  I am going to eat just a few more calories than I have been allowing myself to consume of late.   I will still avoid sugar and starchy carbs, but I will allow myself more actual food. I will faithfully continue my exercise, because the one area of progress that I am seeing is my increase in stamina and energy levels.  Big time increases!  After yesterday’s marathon beach walk I didn’t even stagger and collapse into my beach chair!  Instead, I sat down ever so gracefully, glugged down an entire bottle of water in about a millisecond and then jumped into the Gulf for some well-deserved bobbing.   A month ago, I would have fallen on my face in the sand without budging for the next hour and my legs would have been crying out in pain, begging to be put out of their misery.  But not now, so all in all, I guess we can call that progress.