Weight Loss #9: The Last 20 Pounds and the Never-Ending Uphill Battle

You've heard it from Oprah. Now, you'll hear it from me - there is such a thing called "The Battle of the Last Twenty Pounds".

You’ve heard Oprah say it herself: the last ten pounds are the hardest to lose. I would beg to differ (just a bit) and say that it’s the last twenty. I should know. I spent three months on my last twenty, and I’m now on my last ten. Bad news – it’s not getting easier. You know why that is? It’s because I’m really fixated on that number, my ideal weight.

One of the best things that happened to me recently is I consulted with a fitness guru on my woes of how I have hit a plateau (when no amount of dieting and exercising could make your weight budge). She explained to me that I need not fixate on that number because there’s actually an ideal range for every corresponding height. I was ecstatic to learn that though I haven’t reached my ideal weight yet, I was already within the range. This is good news because I’m not at a health risk anymore, and this is something that every woman will be glad to know.

The fitness guru further explained that should I still want to pursue my ideal weight in pounds, then I should vary my routine and mix up my diet a bit. It might just be that my body has already gotten used to what I eat and how I move about that it needs a bit of a jolt to get things moving once again. To put the theory into practice, I looked up ways to detoxify and have included apple cider vinegar and honey to my many water drinks. I also enrolled in a more intense self-defense class. This variation seemed to have worked. After weighing myself two weeks later, I saw that I had started to lose pounds again.

And you could expect the same to happen to you should you reach the near-end of your weight loss quest. It might not happen until you’re ten or five pounds away, but surely you will experience this very frustrating plateau. It would be good to go into it knowing that you’re not doing anything wrong. You just need to do things a bit differently, rearrange the order, so to speak.

For my part, it didn’t get any easier. But it did get to feel a lot more natural. True enough, I still watch what I eat, but not as beadily as I did when I started. It has already become automatic for me to make the right food choices, primarily because there are no more wrong choices to be found in my pantry. I am no longer ashamed to bring packed lunches and snacks to work. I figured that I’d rather appear to be a geek than walk around feeling like a bloated loser all the time.

And if you’ve reached this point, too, then you’ll know that there’s still a long road ahead. If you’ve already varied your routines and menus and you find that you’re still stuck, never hesitate to ask for some help. Consult a nutritionist, dietician, or fitness guru. Experimentation can only take you so far, and there’s still a lot to be said for consulting the professionals.