I firmly believe that many people fail at losing weight because of an inability to compromise or adjust their plans when necessary. That said, I don’t much care for doing that, myself.

But that’s what I’ve been facing. Between holiday indiscretions and medical issues, my weight loss has been at a standstill after experiencing a couple straight weeks of nice losses immediately before Thanksgiving. I’m not discouraged — yet, but I can feel it lurking around the edges. So it was time to assess what I’m doing and make necessary changes, and sometimes those include trade-offs for things that might not be the ideal. Sometimes, when you get down to it, it’s about choosing the lesser of two evils.

I came into this weight loss effort with existing medical conditions; the two most major ones being debilitating arthritis in my knees, and thyroid disease. It’s a double whammy; one limits my ability to move, and the other complicates weight loss. I have been under doctor’s care for both, as well as prescription medications. While taking thyroid medication is a fact of life for me — my thyroid no longer produces for my body’s needs, so I have no choice but to take medications — I opted to phase out the powerful NSAID prescribed for arthritis pain early this spring because of gastric problems, and because I felt it was contributing to edema.

Rather than bore you with the details, the upside of this decision was that my gastric issues have resolved; the downside is the amount of pain I am in as a result of not taking this medication and carrying so much extra weight. I realized that I was limiting my movement quite a bit because of the pain I’ve been in. The more I limit my movement, the harder it is to lose weight. It’s a vicious cycle.

So, I made the decision to start the medication, again, and take it properly. It’s very possible that the issues that caused me to stop taking the medication were brought on by my own bad habits when taking it; there are specific recommendations for taking any prescription medication, and I was cutting corners. I have promised myself not to do that anymore, while watching to make sure the same issue doesn’t happen, again.

The good side of taking the medication is, of course, less pain and inflammation. The bad side? Possible contribution to water retention… and water retention causes joint pain. This is a conundrum. Plus, I have problems with excess water retention to begin with. As soon as I started the medication, water weight went up. Back to the drawing board.

I ended up going to the doctor; I was due for a thyroid check. My blood pressure is up, so now I’m on a medication for high blood pressure — which also happens to be a diuretic.

So now it’s a balancing act. I believe in taking minimal medications, and I’m thankful to have a doctor that sees having me on high blood pressure medications as a short term thing; as I lose weight, he wants to monitor. I’m not happy at all about the increase in the number of medications I take; but, in the long run, if doing so gets me further down the road toward health, I’m willing to do it, rather than just throw my hands up and be unwilling to change.

Hopefully, over the weeks to come, my body will adjust to these changes and weight loss will progress.

Otherwise, I’m feeling pretty good, especially since resuming the NSAID. The more weight I lose, the better my mental outlook becomes; in many ways, losing weight is addictive, and perhaps that contributes to why I can become so easily frustrated when I don’t see apparent progress on the scale. Still, in the midst of the holiday season, I’m counting the ability to at least maintain as a success, because sometimes you have to look at the big picture and accept there will be necessary compromises to reach your goals.

After all, if you’re driving and stuck at a busy intersection, you can’t just say “screw it!” and turn your car around to head back the way you came. You have to be patient, wait it out, and do what’s necessary to get to where you’re going.