Back at the beginning of September I raised my calorie range at the recommendation of the Fitness Tracker. What I didn't know at that time was it would have been a good idea to raise it in steps, maybe half first and then bits at a time. Because I breastfeed a baby, I always eat in the top of my range. But my weight loss came to crawl.

The change of seasons was also stressful for me, between school starting and the days getting shorter and worries that my baby was underweight (he still is, but at least he's not in a weight plateau, which you don't want when you're gaining centimeters in height every month.) Anyway, for most of September I was stubbornly stuck above 176, which is a significant number for me due to that being the weight when I quit Body for Life in 2002. I really wanted to get past that, but it was HAAAAARD.

There's a theory out there that your fat cells store biochemical memories of when you loaded them. It's an offshoot from the observation that people who've used LSD can get flashbacks of drug use years after they've been clean, because some of the drug was stored in fat cells and when they lose that fat, they get some of the drug. And the resistance I experienced at 176 makes me wonder about that. From 8/30 to 9/25 I lost 1.25 pounds. Sure June was just like that, but in June I was not tracking my food, it was my birthday, and I was sick (two root canals) and I wasn't working out yet.

Since breaking 176, I've just been cruising. Though this could be attributable to 3 things. I trimmed 50 calories off my calorie range (not likely, but who knows). I put a measuring scoop in my cheerios, and I haven't been exercising as intensely (so maybe I'm losing muscle... eep!) I guess I've also been trimming my portions of meat. Or maybe it's none of those things and the baby is just fueling a growth spurt. I mean, figuring out why you're losing weight is just about as mysterious as figuring out why you're on a plateau.

But I'll keep on keeping on. And I'll make sure I'm not losing muscle!