But you already knew that, didn’t you?
See, you’ve done it right. You’ve stuck to a single diet — let’s say Paleo, given the theme of 3NL — and embraced the changes that followed: a shrinking waist, leaner face, and the incredible satisfaction that comes when the whole office notices how much you’ve changed.
And then things get weird.
Maybe you don’t lose as much weight as you had hoped you would. Maybe, after a solid few months of slimming down, you stall — the same number on the scale, but a growing sense of dissatisfaction at your seeming lack of progress. Maybe it picks up again in a week. Maybe it doesn’t.
And maybe, after eating clean and Paleo and doing it right, you utter those three words we’re told are the bane of any healthy diet: “Oh, screw it.” Maybe you decide to indulgence. Maybe you decide to indulge well and do all sorts of things you normally don’t do: drink beer, eat chips, and sneak a bowl of cereal into the mix, fully expecting to pass the next day with the kind of bloating this world has never seen.
You wake up leaner.
You stare at the mirror. You rub your eyes, wrinkle your forehead, and squint at your reflection, wondering if maybe you’re still drunk from the shenanigans of the night before.
Good news, then. You’re not.
Better news, too: the body is weird. And the sooner you accept this, the sooner you can get back to doing what you do best — living well, living healthy, and living happy.
An Uncomfortable Truth
Your body doesn’t always do what you want it to do.
Your weight loss, sad to say, will not follow a completely linear progression, an uninterrupted parade of fat burning and happiness accompanying every month you mark off the calendar.
Want to know what’s going to happen instead? (You already know this, I bet, but bear with me for a moment longer. And please don’t hurt me.)
You’re going to stall. You’re going to make little tweaks to your diet and expect immediate results, only to feel stinging disappointment when you’re staring at the same old body — the same old you — the next morning. You’re going to stare at pictures of other Primal/Paleo for hours on end, admiring their progress, and wondering — in that little voice you never like to listen to — why you’re not so happy and trim.
More importantly, though, you’re not going to understand. You’re going to throw your hands up in the air, wondering what in the world you’re doing wrong, and just when you’re about to throw in the towel on the damn thing, you’re going to wake up weighing more than a few pounds less than the day before.
I’m speaking from experience, here, so trust me when I drill this in: your body is weird. Mine is, at least, and this last year or so of tweaking (and stalling, and the occasional jealous look) has afforded a few insights about why — in a twist! — this might not be such a bad thing after all.
Insight From the Front Line
The body is a complex organism.
We know that, deep down, but we’ve made an art of claiming otherwise. We’ve built an entire industry on the promise of better health, a bloated, over-priced business supported by every single little fact we think we know about the most intricate piece of machinery we’ve ever seen.
That realization is frustrating, in a sense, when we’re trying to tweak. We’re surrounded by untold amounts of information on how to get ripped now, but we all bear the result of trying to put those thirty-six tips for a better sex life in action: a mentality of now, of genuine belief in a quick fix over any kind of long-term solution.
Let’s stop this.
Let’s remember, now, that our bodies are weird. Let’s remember that we’re not always going to understand why we’re bloated one day and lean as can be the next, and let’s admit, now, that the cookie-cutter advice those slick magazines throw up on a monthly basis doesn’t always work as it should.
It can’t.
Why?
We’re weird.
So let’s make an agreement, then, right here and now. Repeat after me:
Hi. Body? It’s me. Look, I don’t get you. But I’m realizing, now, that this is not a bad thing. You’re complicated. You’re unique. You’re the only body I get for however I long I can make you last, so I’m going to try something different — I’m going to accept that you’re weird. I’m going to admit, oh body of mine, that you know a whole hell of a lot more about what you’re doing than I do, so from now on I’m going to try and do just one thing.
I’m going to trust you. And I’m going to stay the course, now, and not let these day-to-day deviations bring me down. I just want you to be healthy, after all, and I’m realizing something pretty sweet: I have the rest of my life to make that happen.
Cheesy? Yes. But it drives home a point, I think, that any modern human doesn’t like to admit: we don’t know everything. We’re not always going to understand why our body does some of the things it does, so we’re going to do the next best thing.
We’re going to accept it. We’re going live well and live healthy, and we’re going to give ourselves all the time we need to get there.
7 Comments »
I'm a writer, minimalist, and health dork with three goals in mind: to teach you how to lose weight, move more, and be happier by living a simple, natural life. It works. Like what you read here? Get 3NL delivered straight to your inbox!
Ha! I love this post. I think it’s important to switch things up, and realize that while the body is a machine, it’s way to complex to ever fully understand!! (And I personally think that occasional random indulgences make you healthier and happier.)
Oh boy, this is much needed. I’m at the complete other end of the spectrum desperately trying to gain weight. I get frustrated often because I end up LOSING weight. It doesn’t help when I get people calling me anorexic behind my back (I’m not) or my husband considering not to stay in the marriage because I’m now unattractive. However, what you’ve written is absolutely true. I’m learning to accept my weird body and just go with the flow. Thank you for this pick me up today!
This is definitely what I needed to read this morning. Thank you!
I woke up, weighed in, and wondered how my body could have GAINED. Thought to myself how my body can be so abnormal that the past few days could have resulted in a gain… and then I saw this post reminding me to stick to it
Thanks. This is good incentive to keep moving in the right direction. My body didn’t get in bad shape in only one day, and it won’t recover in only one day. As with many situations in my life, I try to remember that one day is not a snapshot of the rest of my life – it’s just one day.
“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, :
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.”
Uncle Walt, poet, prophet, paleo.
Your post should be required reading for every girl in the country, every day from the ages of 8 or 9 all the way thru teens, 20s, 30s and beyond?! At least until they really get it, accept this and live it. Love it!
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