The moment you realise you're plateauing.

The last week or so, I've felt really blah. You know, that feeling between wanting to give a shit and not? That's where I've been all week. All week. That's at least seven days. No, I lie. I've really only been there since Wednesday when the scales didn't budge at all. Would you count a 100g loss as losing? I didn't. That was probably my first mistake. A loss is a loss, I should take all that I can.

I've had reason to celebrate this week: I turned 28, someone at uni (finally) noticed my weight loss, and I am still breathing. So why do I feel like crap?

Tonight, I did some long, hard thinking. "Did it hurt?" I hear you say. Why yes, it did. I was starting to feel my back tighten, so I decided to take a hot shower. Once that business was sorted, I decided I wanted to lay down in the bath and have the shower water fall over me. Instead of wasting all that water away, I put the plug in. Slowly but surely, the bath started to fill. As the water rose, so did my thought process:
"Why am I not hungry? Why am I not seeing any movement in the scales? Why am I all of a sudden dissatisfied with my weight loss efforts to date? What on Earth is up with me right now? How wrinkly is my skin? How long have I been in the bath for now? I wonder how long til A is home from work? I wonder how difficult it would be to make one of those wooden rail things to go over the bath so I could sit the laptop on there and watch a film in the bath? I wonder if the dietitian answers their e-mails out of the office?"
By this stage, the bath was quite full. And then it dawned on me: my body is no longer a breakwater!

My hips and thighs are pretty sizable, there's no denying that. A loves my womanly curves, even more so now that they're really coming back in definition (now hurry up stomach and sod off!). However, they (hips and thighs) used to be so sizable that they would create a sort of breakwater in the bath. Tonight, not the case. I could lay down comfortably WITH MY ARMS AND HANDS BESIDE ME and still not touch the sides of the tub! That made me feel pretty damned awesome. Then of course, I wanted A to hurry up home so I could show him (not that he would have ever really paid much attention before). And then I got back on my thought train. I was looking into the medicine cabinet above the hand basin (the sliding glass door was open), and I could see the bottle of iron tablets. Remember that thought process I was experiencing earlier? The answer to most of the health-related questions lies within that bottle. I need to take my iron tablets again.

Of course, this doesn't fix everything, but it will help get everything back on track. I was a bit worried seeing how much iron I was consuming when recording it on My Fitness Pal, but I also remembered that given that I'm iron-deficient, I'm not going to be putting too much in!
So, tomorrow morning, with breakfast, I'll be taking my iron tablet again. Not anything little either, a horse tablet with truckloads of iron. That one tablet has roughly five times the amount of iron required daily. I need that iron. I must take that tablet each day. It will also stop me from getting sick. I'm getting the usual cold symptoms, so I really ought to nip it in the bud. Keep track of me taking my pill on MFP, and kick me up the butt if I'm not!

Moving forward, another reason I believe I'm plateauing is because my metabolism has become accustomed to 1200 calories. I mentioned before e-mailing a dietitian (why on Earth do I insist on spelling dietitian, dietician?); although I know how to eat well, I would really appreciate a little more help and guidance in addition to Pinterest, Taste and the myriad of cookbooks we have here at home. I want to know what a good calorie limit is to eat at to continue weight loss. I understand that I need to exercise as well, but given that exercise is not always easy (take this week for example, I've spent most of this week writhing in pain), I figure that if I'm at least putting the right kinds and balanced amounts of food then that can only help. Heck, it's helped me lose 8kg so far! Fingers crossed I hear from the dietitian on Thursday (she works one day a week at a particular practice).

Another area I've been seriously lacking in is planning. My meal planning has been disastrous of late. It's on like Donkey Kong now though; we need to save money AND eat healthily.
Tonight, we ate delicious eye fillet steak and ever-so-tasty cheesy quinoa cakes. My goodness, they are AMAZINGLY tasty, and SO filling! Fontina cheese is quite hard to track down, and often expensive, so we used Emmental cheese instead.
The great thing about this recipe is that it can be eaten across ANY meal of the day. We didn't cook up all the mixture tonight, so we're going to cook the rest of the mixture for breakfast, along with a fruit and yoghurt (in case you're wondering, I say yog-hurt not yo-ghurt) smoothie. I will take pictures, I need to document so you all (assuming people are reading this!) see what I'm putting through my lips.
I will also post our meal plan for the next week tomorrow, and if there are recipe links, I'll provide those too.

So, all in all, I think I'm doing okay. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to reach my first goal of 88kg by the 31st of August, but I'm hoping that I'll only be 1kg away. I take my measurements on Monday, I'm really looking forward to that, my clothes are fitting me wonderfully so I'm keen to see what the measuring tape tells me!
I have realised a lot of things today, and right now, I have realised that although I am plateauing, I can do something about it. Just the same as I made the conscious decision to lose weight in April.

It's bed time now! Sweet dreams, and thanks for reading this long entry!