Sunday 7 July – The trouble with milestones

This week I have reached 2 milestones, I have lost 10% of my body weight and I am the lowest weight I have been since at least 2020. I was hoping for 3 milestones at once, I only need to lose just over 1lb to hit my 2 stone goal, hopefully that will be next week. But I have to admit it doesn’t feel very ‘milestoney’, and it’s because I have been here before, many times.

I expect if you are reading this it is because you are on, or are considering going on the skinny jab. And I suspect that if you are either of those, this is not your first diet.

I have been on diets on and off since I was 15 years old. I can remember my starting weight back then, it was 10stone 10lb. It is with a little irony that I realise that is only 10lb above my goal weight. What was I thinking?

I have been logging my weight on the ‘My Fitness Pal’ App since 28 May 2015. On that day I weighed 17st 8lb, yes, the exact same weight that I was when I started this journey 8 weeks ago.

I logged my weight every time it went down. Sometimes that was every day, sometimes a few days, and sometimes a few weeks between recordings. Even now I am aware I am doing this. If I lose weight I record it. If I gain a pound, I put it down to a heavy carb day the day before, or not going to the loo, or time of the month, I have a whole list of excuses at the ready. But importantly, I do not record that slight increase. Instead, I wait until the next day, or the day after, or however long it takes until I get a new lower weight to record.

I do not want to interrupt that lovely continuous slope of the line on the graph as it goes down!

Which is why, on the app, my weight gradually goes down from 17.8 in May 2015 down to 13.13 in Sept 2016, shows 13.13 again on 28 Feb 2017 and then the next recorded weigh in… 4 YEARS LATER… on 25 January 2021 is 19 stone 10lbs.

Then the downward trend begins, again.

I got back down to 15 st 10.6lb on 24 June 2023, which is why today’s weight of 15 st 9.4lb is the lowest I have been since the last time it was the lowest I had been!!

And here lies the problem. Milestones are supposed to track progress, showing you how far you have travelled, marking the route forward towards your destination. But what if you have been here before? What if you are passing the milestone for the 2^nd, 3^rd, or 10^th time? Does that mean you are going in circles?

 I always remind myself how weird it is that 15 and half stone feels so good on the way down and yet it felt terrible on the way up.

So, what have I learned?

Firstly, that these arbitrary milestones are just that, arbitrary. The scales do not know that they have reached a significant number, any more than your body does.

What matters is learning from whatever happened last time, so that as you pass the same mile marker as before you do so with new information, new strategies, new resources that you didn’t have before.

I genuinely have no idea how I sleepwalked from 13st 13lb to 19st 10lb with no record of the journey in between. Logically I know that I will have stepped on the scales, not liked what I saw, chose not to record it, and then avoided the scales for the next few years.

I know that my learning has to be, that when I reach my goal this time, I cannot simply stop. I need to continue to monitor my weight forever.

My intention is to set myself a sensible limit, maybe 10lbs, so that if I go on an all-inclusive holiday, or it’s Christmas, or whatever socially acceptable excuse, I will allow myself to gain a max of 10lbs and then take action to return to my new set point.

It sounds sensible in theory.

Secondly, I still need to celebrate the milestones, even the ones I have passed many times before. I am always reminding myself that, whatever the goal, whatever the plan, I can only start from where I am. There is no point wishing I was starting from somewhere I was 10 years ago.

I can only start from where I am, now, today, in this moment.

And the jab? This is making this easier than ever before. I am now 8 weeks in and crucially I am not feeling deprived, or that I am having to do this with gritted teeth. It feels effortless. This feels very different. 

I have always felt that the reason I have re-gained the weight previously, is because, although I have lost a lot of weight a few times, I have never actually reached my goal. So even though I had lost a lot, at least 50lbs on 2 or 3 occasions, I was still not slim. I was just slimmer.  So I have never celebrated the achievement. I have, instead thought, well, this is a lot better, but there is still a long way to go. Which is not a very uplifting prospective when the journey has felt hard.

Goals are less motivating when it is a goal you have already achieved. One of the factors that led to my big weight gain was completing the London Marathon in 2016. I had worked so hard to achieve it, and the moment it was done, all motivation went.

This time is different. And yes, I have said that many many times before too. But it really does.

Here are the next milestones lined up ahead of me.

1.4lbs to get to my next milestone, which is 2 stone lost.

9.5lb to be under 15 stone

25 lb to be 13st 12lb which will be the lowest I have been since my records began

5st 9.4lb to target