To Plateau Or Not To Plateau

pla·teau

[pla-toh or, esp. British, plat-oh] noun, plural pla·teaus, pla·teaux [-tohz, -tohz] verb, pla·teaued, pla·teau·ing.

noun

Psychology . a period of little or no apparent progress in an individual's learning, marked by an inability to increase speed, reduce number of errors, etc., and indicated by a horizontal stretch in a learning curve or graph.
 

When I weighed in yesterday afternoon, I was surprised to see that I didn't lose any weight.  I had really stepped up my game as far as exercising and was proud to say that, even without having the Active Link (remember, I lost it in the snow a week or so back), I kept my promise to know how I was going to be active every day.

That being said, I needed to take a look at everything I'm doing, especially if I think it is right.  The week prior at our meeting, we focused on portion control and how to be handling it correctly.  I assumed I was doing it right; how hard could it be if you are using the Weight Watchers issued measuring cups?  Believe it or not, I wasn't doing it correctly and I probably was lying to myself a little.  You don't always realize you are doing this; you think you would, however, for me, that is not the case.  I missed some of the demonstration and was unable to stay after the meeting to see it again.  That hurt me a bit, in the end.   

In any event, I ended up taking a look last night at the instructions for the cups.  A cup or 1/2 cup of one thing is not the same as a cup or 1/2 cup of another.  I think the best option for me is to find a real scale, preferably a digital one (I have bought others in the past and were not pleased with their measuring abilities).  I think that I also need to extend weighing and measuring when I am shopping, too.  Supermarkets have scales and a lot of them are digital, so I will be employing them the next time I do a big shopping.  

I also need to take some time and figure out what it takes for me to walk a mile.  If it is nice enough this weekend, before we go out for the evening, I will take a walk in the nearby park since I know that to and from is 2.5 miles.  I think my iPhone has a pedometer, so I can use that to measure a mile (I think).  Once I know that, I will know what my time is and can truthfully report it in Activity Tracking.

I've also said that I will examine the DVD that came with my member kit; I haven't endeavored to do that yet, but I know that just keeping it in my purse is not going to help with my goal.

So, this week, I plan to make these changes.  Our leader is going away for three weeks and she asked us to have something good to report when she returns.  I will be happy if I've followed through with my promises and even happier if said promises result in some loss.  That would be awesome.

Moving on...