Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Plateau?

I think I may have hit the dreaded plateau. June was kind of a loss because of the craziness of the month and my sporadic exercising. However, other than a McDonald's indiscretion the other day*, I have been pretty precise with my eating for the last few weeks. I've been doing the calorie cycling, eating my high calories on the heaviest exercise days. I've been swimming and when I can't swim I do weights and pilates at home, which, with the weather the way it's been, is probably worth more than I give myself credit for based on the amount of sweat I'm generating in my non-air conditioned apartment on the 3rd floor.

Yet I weigh myself every morning and the scale keeps bobbing between a 2-3 pound spread. I whip out the tape measure and don't really see any difference. And, people, I need to fit into my wedding dress!

With my schedule, I can't really squeeze in more workout time right now. So I guess my only option is to try to mix it up. This morning I swam my 80 laps, but I threw in 10 laps of backstroke and I can really feel it. Different muscles, different breathing. I think I need to fight my way out of my workout rut, which it's easy to fall into when it's 6:45 AM and I just don't want to have to think about an interesting and challenging routine. Apparently, though, just swimming my usual isn't cutting it anymore.

On the mornings when I don't swim, I think I may try to go for a fast walk. Since I drive to work now I never get to walk through my neighborhood anymore on the way to the train station so it will be nice to check out everyone's gardens and see what's new. Then I can do some weights in the evenings.

I just need to do something. This whole plateau thing is very annoying!


* Which was totally not worth it. The puny, deep fried, heavily battered Chicken Selects were not all they had promised to be. Yesterday I had a Southwest Salad and realized I should have just ordered that the other night for dinner. Yum! And no guilt!

3 comments:

Kim said...

Plateaus blow. Make sure you are drinking lots of water, and maybe shuffle your healthy menu around a little bit. That might help give your body a little nudge to move in the right direction. :)

You are going to be a beautiful bride!

Kate said...

Plateaus do suck big time! I've been fighting with the same 5lbs for quite some time, although I think I finally broke it:) Just hang in there, examine your habits, and change things up a bit and you'll get out of it!

Amazon Alanna said...

I think you are absolutely right about breaking the plateu by changing up your workout routine. Different strokes, brisk walks are great ideas. Have you thought of changing up your weight routine? I do'nt know what you currently do, but maybe lower reps, higher weights, or do "pull" muscles on one day, "push" muscles on another, and then legs on a third.

Trickin' your body can be so easy...