On January 28th 2007, I joined a weight release support group for encouragement. It was a free Internet chat forum of women with a similar interest, to release some excess weight and we all had our own preferred way of going about it.  We were not there to instruct on how to do it, but encourage and support and report our progress over 12 week, seasons. 

When I joined, I desperately wanted to succeed in releasing weight, this time.  With 51 kilos to lose to achieve my correct BMI, it seemed a near impossible gaol to achieve but I had been given a new sense of belief that it was possible and that I was not genetically predetermined to always be obese, because a family member had the previous year released around 56 kilo, so I knew it was possible.   I had for the first time in years, belief that I could do it.

 Within this small weight release forum, I found friendships and people who believed in me as I did them and we together believed that if we were persistent we would release weight, and I know that all who were consistent, did lose weight, all be there variations and frustrating weeks of small gains and weight plateaus to contend with, the group stuck together and many of us, including myself, lost a considerable amount of weight and had a huge increase in fitness....then things started to slide. 

What went wrong?  A couple of my best friends stopped having weight losses and dropped out of the group, one of the great motivators in loosing weight became pregnant, others were floundering and there was a new core of members not fully believing they could do it and not trying too hard.  A lot of doubt and negativity appearing and while I stayed in there, it was more in the role of a counsellor, trying to help motivate, with no one there motivating me or leading by example and there I was....my weight heading into a stall pattern, everyone else was stalling, regaining, generally struggling and I was focusing on my plateau.  It was hard to break away from that group but they were not helping me, eventually the decision was not mine, personality clashes occurred, I asked for moderator intervention, it wasn't available, so I parted company and felt a sadness akin to grief that something that had once been so positive for many of us had somehow run it's course for me.  

Note :-I have now developed many ties to supportive friends, and am working in a WAS slimming forum that I don't think could develop the issues of the former forum as a the members and myself are not as dependent on the forum, we are perhaps, more self reliant and the forum is more an aid than an essential  crutch. 

 Well my plateau has been my weight release focus for a year and a half now. During that time I’ve travelled nice around the country, (I’m on my second run now), and friends who only see me once a year, marvelled at the change in me from a size 22/24 to a size 12/14 though this is still obese when you are 5’2” tall.  Some expressed fear I would become too thin, that comment usually from people who don’t want to see you slim as it might make them more aware they themselves are overweight, I think, however it does throw a negativity fear into you, a concern about ‘shrinking away’, if you like.

So I’ve read extensively about this ‘set point’. That even scientists do not fully understand, these plateaus where your body slows down it’s metabolism to try to stop you loosing more body fat.  There is a lot written about why slimmers reach set points, plateaus, weight stalls, I’ll not try to explain this in depth and a lot written about how to break free of such a weight stall. 

Most of the move forward off a weight plateau advice has to do with making a change.  Shocking your body out of it’s plateau, by doing things differently, if you are on a low calorie diet,, eat more weight for a week, then when you start eating fewer calories, it’s like you have started dieting for the first time and your weight release is off and moving again. 

Then others do not advocate low calorie diets in the first place, saying these create slow metabolisms and it’s very hard to gain sufficient nutrients for the long term process of moving from obese to slim, on a low nutrient diet.   If your read the forums in some low carb, low calorie, low fat groups, they have threads about hair loss and gall bladder illness, makes me very wary of wavering away from a reasonable calorie range of a minimum of 1,300 to say 1,600 calories, of a wide range of healthy foods, and listening to my bodies hunger and satisfied signals to determine how much I need to eat within guideline. I have read a lot about Intuitive eating, eating to my hunger scale and those books have not helped me move off my half way to goal weight plateau, any more than brief dalliances into low carb, low calorie eating pans or high intensity exercise has.

Other advice about busting plateaus is to eat higher protein, in smaller quantities and more frequently, say 5 times a day.  Then there is the Wendy plan, where those on weight watchers, eat more points one day, less the next and continue alternately so over the whole week, the points average out as the correct amount for the week.

Personal trainers and gym instructors take a change the exercise routine approach to busting plateaus...the main thing, that keeps coming through is to change something. 

Over these 18 months of my long plateau, I tried heaps of changes and yes there were short term, non lasting results, but always I would go back to my set point of around and close to 88.8 kilo, yesterday’s weight and my weight of 18 months ago. 

Yet today I am convinced I have discovered what is going to work for me, today i have total belief, I know, 18  months from today I will be and will be holding at a set point at or close to my ideal BMI, a weight I was once healthy and comfortable and looking great at. My goal weight of 64 kilo.   I will share why I believe this, tomorrow.