Weightloss pattern

In five days I will be 3 months since surgery. Today I hit 40 pounds lost since surgery, and as infuriating as that is to me(28 of those pounds were in the first month), I can deal with it.

Comparison is a killer, blah blah blah. I know this. I tell myself this everyday (and part of that is why I haven't been about as much as I was--because it's easier not to compare myself to others who weighed around what I did the day of surgery and who've lost 2x as much since if I don't see it. I'm not mentally strong enough to just ignore it all the time... alas.)

Which brings me to my complaint! I'm averaging about 2.5 pounds per week, which I get is normal when you get a month or two out. My complaint isn't with the loss amount, it's the pattern of loss. If anything shakes my confidence in myself, it's the pattern I've noticed the last 4-6 weeks.

Goes something like this:

• Hit a new low weight
• For the next week, sit there like a boulder
• For the second week, GAIN WEIGHT EVERYDAY ****il I hit 4ish pounds heavier than I should be)
• Suddenly lose that extra weigh
• Over the next 2-3 days, lose dramatic amounts each day (1-1.5 pounds per day...)

Now I want to compare THAT. Anyone else have a pattern that looks like that? Because let me tell you that it's horrifying to see the scale start moving up. I have 30 years of prior weight-loss experience that tells me: once you start gaining, you've reached the end of what you're going to be able to lose. Most of that is just negative/emotional self-talk, but that is the hardest kind of self-talk to ignore! I keep on trucking, stick to my plan, hit my water/protein/carb totals during those hairy couple of weeks, but that second week when my weight goes up is a killer.

(Note: I weigh myself every day because I have a heart condition and with the medicines I take for it, I need to be on the look out for the sudden big water gains. Those 4ish pounds often trigger that fear, but it creeps on a little each day instead of BLAM. Anyway...)

Anyone else? Is this normal for anyone? Could it actually be a sign that I truly am going to stop losing like my emotional self-talk likes to say?

Yep. That's how my body works too. Hitting a low is always followed by a bounce back. And then sudden big losses out of nowhere. 

I know you are saying you don't feel like you a strong enough to ignore it all...so start doing mental push-ups. I spent years after surgery tormented by the scale. Only recently have I made peace with it.  I finally realized that I have no control over the scale and I literally had to accept that fact. I decided I didn't want to be miserable over something I couldn't control so I put a ton of work into fixing my head around this issue (and other issues as well). If you're interested in knowing more, send me a PM. 

It's such a head game. I can stay pretty mentally level during the week long holding pattern, but when it bounces back up, I'm a mess! Not enough of a mess to get off the plan, but still...

I am curious about your mental-pushups, and tried to PM, but the website kept crapping out. After I typed it twice, I decided to just pop it onto this thread. You can PM me though if you don't want to put it all out there!

Thank you for your response, and your loss is amazing. (She said while trying not to compare... :)

I have noticed a similar trend the last few months for me also.  I'm thinking it is around my cycle time, but since I don't have a period any more I'm not sure.  I gain one week, lose that weight the next week then finally start to lose for two weeks and it starts all over again. This was preop and now post op too.

I do think part of mine is tied to cycle, but not entirely. I may be off on the length of time(calling it a week because I'm lazy) that each stage takes, but I get these big loss triggers 2x per month. Once in the middle, and the second about 2 days before Wes Craven leaves my house.

The Wes Craven one I can easily understand. Bloating starts before he flips the switches, and fades after the nightmare day. It makes sense to me. That mid-month one I have no idea about, aside from being there specifically to horrify and torture me.

Yep. It was very similar for me. Month one nice and steady, and by about where you are it swtiched to a stair step pattern. Log your weight on something that will show you a graph. You will find after a couple of months you likely will see a pattern. In my case, it revolved around my period. The week leading up to the period my weight would spike, calories would spike. After 3 days in I would lose that gain. Then a secondary pattern of no weight loss for up to 21 days, but then all of the weight loss for the month would drop off in 2 or 3 days. So despite my averages in the ticker seeming to be pretty steady, for many of those months it really reflects only 2 or 3 days where the scale dropped. 

I struggled with that too, but once I realized the pattern it made it easier for me to not play head games with myself and stick with it. Hang in there- 

I'm logging it in MFP--which does a graph, thank goodness, or I'd probably still be stuck thinking that I'm not losing any at all. I looked back over the entries today and know I've lost about 11 pounds in the past month, the second month was less, first was 28 pounds(c.diff powered, no doubt), for cumulative 40.4 since surgery. But seriously, my lags between drops are so long(and I go up), that if I didn't log it I wouldn't think I'd lost any this month.

But it does help to know that other people have this too. I always have heard 'stair step' pattern, but mine's more like a downhill heart rhythm line! Up a bit, down a bit more, flat line...Up a bit, down a bit more, flat line...  Ugh. If I had to go up stairs like that, I'd end up with a broken ankle and head trauma!

Yep...when up more than down!  But over the course of the past 20 months...down 86 pounds from where I started!  Sometimes it's a lot easier to look back than forward...and a lot more rewarding.  Hang in there...you're doing all the right things and it will pay off.  Best of luck!

You're right. I should review the numbers more and remember that when I was still pre-op, by the time I got to the fifth month on my nutritionist-supervised diet, I wasn't losing anything anymore because I was so hungry all the time. Nothing in month six, then nothing in the six weeks that it took me to get scheduled.... I didn't start losing again until the official pre-op torture diet began.

I should get a dry erase board and write my start weight and current weight on it, slap it by my bed so I see it first thing in the morning! It would probably help me believe it. Maybe it's time for some full length pictures....

You're doing great, so just keep on truckin'! :)   I lost in stair-step fashion also (very slowly too - 5-6 lbs per month), and plotted data on graphs and charts hoping to convince myself that I was on the right track.

Some people are hares, some are turtles.  I was a turtle for sure, but if you just keep plodding along you'll get there, and you'll have really solidified some good habits on the way.  I managed to talk myself into thinking that losing slower meant that my skin had more time to bounce back so I would be less jiggly at the end.  Not sure if that was true or I just have good genes, but it worked out pretty well. :)

You'll know when you're done - it's when YOU say so, not when the little voice in your head that worries and complains says so.  Hang in there!!