P is for Plateau

I have been doing this Focus T25 program for exactly four weeks today.  At the end of week two, beginning of week 3, I came down with a wicked case of strep throat.  That threw off my workout schedule, diet and life in general because I basically could not get off of the couch.  Before T25 I would have totally used that illness to eat comfort food before, during and after but I did not do that this time.  I am very proud of myself for not eating a bunch of crap and for getting back into my workouts as soon as possible.  However, I was not able to eat anything and I had a really high fever for 3 days so I did eat popsicles and drank Sprite which threw off my diet since I had not been eating any sugar.

This morning I weighed myself and I have only lost a whopping 1.2 pounds in the last two weeks.  I can definitely feel my body changing so I am not going to let that discourage me.  Instead, I am turning discouragement into determination!  The time for change is now or never and never is unacceptable.  I googled weight plateaus and I found a lot of useful information.  There were many reasons offered up as to why you may be experiencing a plateau.  One of the reasons was diet.  When you first start on your journey to change your body through diet and exercise you are determined and prepared.  The first few weeks it is easy to stick to the changes.  But eventually, you may slip back into some of your old ways.  For me, it was sugar.  I had the popsicles and Sprite when I was sick.  Don't get me wrong, I would do that again in a heartbeat because I was beyond sick.  Today I sat down and had a hard look at what I was eating or doing differently in the last two weeks that I had done in the first two weeks (in which I lost nearly 10 pounds).  One thing I did was to add a breakfast smoothie.  I think that is adding too many carbohydrates.  I decided at the beginning that I have so much weight to lose that my best option is to eat mostly protein.  Since my illness I have occasionally had red meat as a part of dinner which is much more fattening than the usual chicken I have for dinner.  I also have had baby red potatoes as part of my dinner which I don't think that I should have been having.  I decided I needed to go back to the basic foods in the Keep It Real foods and protein recipes that I was following the first two weeks.

The other things that I have found that could be the culprit of my plateau include needing to change up my workout (I am following T25 to the letter so this could not be it) or a possible thyroid or medical problem (I was thoroughly checked by my doctor in the recent past so doubtful this is the issue).

Likely the culprit, as far as I can tell, is my diet so I am going to switch that up.  I may be down but do not count me out!  Stay tuned for the rest of the story as Paul Harvey would say:)