Well, it's been another busy and stressful week. I suppose it's not surprising that the scale has been stubborn this month. Cortisol, a stress hormone, plays a big result in weight loss, and so does good sleep. Ask me how well I've been sleeping LOL.
But let's look at the positives; the scale has still been down, even if it's not as much as I'd like. And maybe my body has needed some time to adjust from the huge rate of the past few months. You can see that when I started exercising in January it really kick started my weight loss! If you're still considering whether you should add some movement, I hope this is your little kick to get started!
Not only is exercise a great way to boost your metabolism and improve your cardiac health, preserve lean muscle mass, and help your skin tighten up (seriously, it does ALL of those!) but you'll also very likely increase your weight loss. What's the downside? Well, it's kind of boring, getting sweaty isn't fun, and you have to block in time consistently for it. When I compare those two lists, it makes me realize that prioritizing my flesh suit really is important, and that I can carve out the time.
Once you reach your 40s, women start to lose lean muscle mass even if they aren't losing weight, because of hormonal changes. This is why women tend to start to gain weight during perimenopause; because less lean body mass means fewer calories burned, so even if you keep your caloric intake exactly the same you will start to slowly gain weight.
I am glad to be forming the habit of strength training now, in the hopes that I can head off that reduction in muscle mass. Any weight loss program will cannibalize muscle as well as fat because that's simply how weight loss works, but the more you add weights and resistance training, the more you are signaling to your body that it needs to preserve your muscle, and so the percentage of fat you lose will increase.
So far, I'm still mostly sticking with Leslie Sansone's Walk At Home app, which I would highly recommend! It has videos for all fitness levels, and every month they release two calendars (a beginners' calendar and a more challenging one) with their recommended schedule of videos for the month. The program is generally 6 days a week with videos of various lengths (some are as short as 5 minutes, but generally range from 15-45 minutes) and they mix it up between cardio, core work, and weights/resistance band.
You can do as much or as little of the program as works for you, and there is a big collection of videos that you can search through if the monthly calendar doesn't appeal to you on a certain day. I really like how they have lots of options at various intensity levels, so whether I need a lighter day or I really want to push it, I can find something that works for my time frame. If you've got 15 minutes, you have time to do a mile! (yeah, it measures in Imperial, but activity is activity!) With the really hot weather on the way, exercising at home starts to sound a lot more appealing. You don't need equipment or a lot of space, although a resistance band and some dumbbells come in handy- both are available on Amazon or even at Dollarama!
I am really liking the June calendar, which has an emphasis on weights and resistance training. It also incorporates some meditation videos, if you find that helpful. If you'd like to join me and do the June workouts, I'd love to hear how you're finding them!
With regards to my Ozempic dosing, I'm planning to raise to the full 0.5mg this week. I haven't had as many side effects and I'd like to push past this slower month a bit and restart my loss. At this point, it's still a tiny increase anyway so hopefully all will be well.
It's taken me to my 31st shot to make it to 0.5mg, and the weight has still been coming off, my A1C is down, and my cardiac fitness is up! I am glad that I'll have lots of room to increase my dose later when I hit plateaus, because if I was already up at 2mg or the max dose, there would be nowhere to go from there. I feel like this decision to dose slowly was right for me, but I'm not a doctor or any kind of medical professional so please don't take this as medical advice.
I'm almost to 50lbs lost on Ozempic! That's just over 18% of my starting weight when I began taking the medication. I'm already ahead of the average 14.8% loss with this medication after a year, so what I'm doing is clearly working well for me. Stall or no stall, I'm just going to keep going! I'm also going to use some of my plateau breaking tricks to give me a little boost :)
OZ Week 3 gain: 2.0lbs
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