Plateaus and frustration

Hi Everyone,

I am having a frustrating time with my weight loss right now. I feel a bit annoyed with myself for even feeling bad about it. After all, I am down 90 pounds total and it has ONLY been 5 months. But I have hit a plateau and it is frustrating the hell out of me. The other morning, I was almost in tears as I stood on my scale and saw that I had GAINED 2 pounds. I have heard others talk about hitting plateaus. I listened and felt bad and encouraged them not to take the scale numbers so seriously, but this is different because now it is happening to me and I do not have the patience to deal with it. Not right now.

Like I said, I feel ungrateful for all that I have been given. But it is hard to sometimes sit in the group and hear how people have reached their goals in a year when I feel like I have so far to go. I fear I will never live up to the successes that everyone else has had. Tony lost 100 pounds in three months, and yet here I sit, struggling to get off the 90 pound loss mark. I sit here and think, "what am I doing wrong?" I am eating right. I have been working out. I am spending a lot of money to work with a personal trainer, and still I am losing and gaining back the same 3 pounds for a month now. I feel like I am falling behind in some way or failing, and failure is not something I cannot face right now. I am tired from working 6 days a week and working out 3 or 4 nights. I am still not menstruating regularly (my apologies to the men who are reading this) which is something else I had hoped would resolve itself by now and I am surviving mostly on cheese and egg whites. My skin is sagging on my arms and inner thighs, which is gross and makes me feel self-conscious. I am wearing shapewear, which is uncomfortable at times, and not very pleasant to wear in the summer time. Sometimes I, literally, feel like I am the fattest woman in the world. And now I have developed large and uncomfortable skin tags in somewhat private areas. So, once again, I am feeling like I don’t know why I have put myself through this.

I still have 110 pounds more to lose before I get to my goal, IF I can get to it at all. Another 110 pounds seems impossible to me right now. And the idea of having to continue on this road and not see any weight loss on a weekly basis, makes me want to give up and go back to my old habits. In our last meeting we talked about how the first year after surgery is the “honeymoon” period and it was after that time things begin to really get hard. Well, things are hard for me and it hasn’t even been six months. So, yes, I am frustrated and angry, but mostly I am frightened. I am frightened that I am going to fail again.

This entire process has been very hard for me, both personally and physically. Every time I get to a place where I have some peace, something else happens in my life that makes this process that much more difficult for me. I am reminded once again that this is not “the easy way” to lose weight. I just hope and pray I made the right decision.

Thank you everyone for letting me complain and moan for a little bit. I hope to get over this soon.

Veronica