Seven Pound Drop

Over a year ago, when I began the exergaming campaign, one of my primary interests was whether video games could be used to maintain or lose weight. But over the ensuing year, as weight did indeed drop, focus has shifted somewhat to endurance, strength and stamina building aspects of exercise, as well as wonderment at how far one can push one’s body before collapse.

For a long while, perhaps three months or more, my weight has remained relatively stable even as I’ve been adding additional miles on top of my base weekly mileage and exergaming. I haven’t been bothered by it, to be honest, since clothing has been fitting me better and my focus has been set on sheer distance. Over the last month or so, I’ve been fine tuning clothing and regimen in order to make distance runs longer, and added the goal of a half marathon in April.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to me yesterday, when I stepped onto my garden variety scale for the first time in perhaps a month. Mind you, that month was also filled with yummy holiday events. The surprise was not only that I had dropped seven pounds seemingly overnight (at least since my last weigh in), but that I had been just thinking about fine tuning my eating and exercise even more in an attempt to lose weight, because I was sure I’d added some weight.

Obviously there are many things at play in one’s weight: daily, weekly, monthly fluctuations; muscle versus fat balance within the body; level, frequency and type of exercise; portions, types and balance of food; among other things.

We hear from doctors that a body can change dramatically for a short period of time; but that in its physical memory, it retains a “memory” of its former self before the change was implemented. So, following this theory, it’ll bounce back to its former “normal” state unless change is constant and indefinite. That makes sense. I’ve also wondered for a while that when the body realizes it’s being holistically changed (like shedding 70+ pounds), it’ll hold on at certain stages before allowing itself to move into the next state of transformation.

So, using my weight loss as an example, it was hard to lose the first 60 pounds. It took a lot of concentrated effort regarding exercise and food. Then, for about three months or so, my body seemed to stay the same weight wise, regardless of whether I worked out more or less, or ate more or less, or healthier or less healthy. The number on the scale remained the same. Then, one day, I had a seven pound loss without seemingly changing anything.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens going forward. With a half marathon coming up in 12 weeks 2 days, my training has to increase. It’d be nice to lose some more weight, but my focus is on the distance, not the clothing size. So we’ll see.

Have you found something like this happening with changes you’ve made in your life? If so, please email me and let me know!