One thing I owe my readers is a full review of LoseIt. I keep saying I’m going to do one, but each time I try to get into it, I find the review keeps getting longer and more detailed. For those willing to wait for that, I’ll plan to post it by the end of the week. The “tl; dr” version is “a great way to track calories and exercise, interact with others on your journey, and make fitness and weight loss somewhat fun and entertaining, or at least as fun and entertaining as it can be”.
The piece I want to talk to for this posting is the community aspect, and how that community can be helpful if you let it be. With a couple of exceptions, my “friends” within the LoseIt app are people I do not know in real life. My sole interaction with them, at least so far, is via the LoseIt app. I know some might think that that’s a very weak connection, and probably not really helpful beyond superficial cheerleading. I understand that reasoning, but I would have to soundly say to anyone who thinks that way, “you are wrong”.
I had an interesting experience after I came back from Philmont in July 2016. Over the course of two and a half weeks, where I’d exercised a tremendous amount, burned a lot of calories, and kept a meticulous measure of my food, I should have come back leaner and lighter than ever. Instead, I came back close to twelve pounds heavier than when I had left. I was weirded out by that, and I felt a little ashamed. Maybe I hadn’t kept as good a track as I intended. Maybe my calculations were wrong. Maybe I didn’t work as hard as I thought. Regardless, I certainly didn’t want to post a twelve-pound weight gain. What would my friends think?! Yes, even at this point, my primary feeling was of shame because I’d drifted so far off my course. My answer? I’d stop posting my weigh-ins for a bit, jut until I got back to my earlier number and then I could pick up like nothing happened. Surely it wouldn’t take that long.
Days stretched into weeks, and weeks stretched into months, and then it dawned on me that I’d stopped weighing in entirely. I still posted, still logged my food, still cheered people on, but my weight hadn’t moved on the charts for three months. Hmmm. Well, I better take a look. I mean, come on, how bad could it be?
I stepped on the scale and ended up reading a weight that was thirty pounds heavier than when I reached my lowest weight back in March of 2016. Thirty pounds!!! What the…?!! I knew full well what had happened, and why. I felt embarrassed to post a follow-up. It felt good to get that daily high five for being on track, even if the daily high five was coming from people I didn’t really know. For certain, my embarrassment of having to post a reversal made me shy away from weighing in each day, and that shying away from weighing every day removed me from that immediate feedback loop. I ate much the same as I had been, and I figured I was moving about the same amount, but over the course of several months, the food intake crept up, the activity level crept down (injuries and minor aches helped that along, to be fair) and thus, I found myself in negative territory, giving up thirty pounds of gains.
I tried quietly setting a new goal, and I even made a post stating that I was trying a new plan of attack. Net result? New update and a definite highlight of reversal.
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