Good news this week! I have not only lost weight, but I’m now officially 40 pounds down! I am delighted!

There are simply times when weight loss doesn’t happen. Yes, there might be other changes going on within the body, or physiological reasons why the scale isn’t moving, but those times can be very frustrating. Call them stalls, plateaus, slowdowns — regardless, the result’s the same. When you expect change to happen and it doesn’t, you have choices to make.

A 40 pound jug of water

You can wait it out and hope that whatever happens to be going on in your body sorts itself out. Sometimes, this is exactly what happens, so getting in a rush to change things might end up disastrous. So much goes on in our bodies that we are unaware of; inflammation or small infections may cause our bodies to hang onto weight.

You can examine what you’re doing to make sure you haven’t slid off course. That’s always wise; if portion control is a problem and your portions are getting bigger, that might be all that needs to be adjusted in order to continue losing.

You can, of course, also react to frustration with subjectivity and decide that you don’t care if you put on ten pounds, you’re going to eat that chocolate, because your stupid body isn’t cooperating, anyhow. That’s never a wise choice… but it’s certainly a common one.

You can also reassess, and review what you’ve been doing that might be working against you, especially if you’ve been objectively keeping track of your loss patterns and you know what you’re experiencing is outside of the norm.

This last choice is the one I made this week. As I wrote last week, I have to make sure I’m doing everything right in order to lose. This week, I have been returning to what I know works for my body, instead of letting myself slide on the things I don’t much care for. It’s an easy thing to do; the parts of any plan that we don’t like are usually the first ones to get cut, and it’s there that we have to look for keys to why the plan may not be working. Eliminating something that’s part of an efficient plan, just because you don’t like it, is subjective and likely a cause for self-sabotage.

This week, I dedicated myself to getting myself back on track, and it worked. This journey is made of constant adjustments and reassessments, and as long as I keep my mind on the long term goals instead of the things that bug me (like drinking enough water), I’ll continue with my success.

“If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan — never the goal.” — Unknown