When Progress Grinds To A Halt

And What I’m Doing About It

Lack of progress can feel frustrating when you are on your health or weight loss journey. Or it can feel even worse when you kick back into reverse, especially if you don’t manage your mindset and expectations around it.

I promised to share the ups and downs of my journey to lose 15-20lb in 9 weeks on my fabulous at 40 mission, and this is one example of the fluctuations that I know many mid life women come to face on a weight loss, or more specifically a fat loss journey.

When you come to a sticking point in your journey it’s really common to want to falter into one of two responses.

1. Say fuck it, why even bother and revert back to just telling yourself you are happy as you are and you should stop trying so hard.
2. Use the lack of progress to go even harder and decide you have to restrict more food and workout harder. This is toxic dieting 101!!

I refuse to do either of these, both patterns are pretty destructive. 

I know I set the goal of 15-20lb in 9 weeks and I will make the progress that I want to see, even if I have to extend the timeline a little. 

In fact, I think I’ll be doing this journey through 2023 and beyond, a health journey is lifelong and we need to approach it that way.

Many women deal with the symptoms of menopause for up to 10 years!! Yes 10!!

Which is why it’s become so important to me to learn the tools, share them so that we can all do our best to thrive at this time in our lives.

There will be ups and downs along the way and regardless of the weight loss goal, the actual goal is really just to feel good and so that is what I’m working on the most and that is a non-negotiable.

Lessons From The Last Week

Though I know this last week wasn’t feeling like the breakthrough week I was hyping it up to be last week, I didn’t feel like it was as bad as being a week when I would gain 2lb back on.

I know full well that weight loss is never a completely linear process, and even less of a one when dealing with hormonal fluctuations. But on the other side of the menstrual cycle is the time estrogen should be rising and we move towards being able to train harder, and also feeling better energy-wise and was anticipating a better result.

Neither of those has happened this last week, which could be signalling my declining estrogen levels. Though I have felt ok to workout and actually did 5 workouts (which is more than my usual 3) I have not been feeling as strong or as energised as I am used to feeling. The workouts felt hard, it was a sruggle to get myself to do them, though I felt much better mentally after it was done.

Movement of any kind always clears my head, it helps me to feel strong and accomplished and it’s as supportive to my mental health as it is my physical health.

I have been focused on making sure I am getting enough sleep. I have talked about the importance of sleep for the midlife woman and it was a big feature in the Midlife, Menopause & Weight Loss workshop. 

So I’m really pleased that my watch data is telling me and over the last 7 days have averaged over 8 hours sleep a night. Even if I don’t exactly feel like it, I am happy with this progress. 

For most of the nights, I have been working on reducing screen time 30 minutes before bed, resting my eyes and staying away from the melatonin (sleep hormone) destroying blue light that is emitted from our screens and devices. I have been getting into bed with a low light on and reading a book. Well ,for at least 5 out of the 7 I have. This is helping me to get to sleep quicker and is showing some increases in deep sleep.

So like with any intervention, sometimes it can take some time before you really begin to feel the benefits, so I am determined to keep this going, and maybe even increase my sleep amounts if I’m still not yet feeling the energy return to my body just yet.

Mood, brain fog and headaches have been a consistent challenge the last couple of weeks. I was hoping that I would have moved through and out of this week, but here they still are on the daily.

I feel the last week there have been some elements of stress. I had a mishap with the recording of the workshop and had to re-do it all. I have put a few extra things on my plate that I wanted to get done and some of the perceived stress we as women add to ourselves.

This feedback is guiding me to making stress reduction a focus this week, and keeping those stress reduction habits simple. The habits that I want to implement to take action on are journaling and exploring different styles of breathwork and meditation. Though I have been doing these I want to be a little more intentional about them this week, especially the breathwork/meditation part.

I’m also going to look at adding in some more mind/body work. By that I mean some yoga/mobility/relaxation work, either at the end of my workouts or as a before bed wind down sequence.

So moving into week 5 my focused habits are

• Tracking everything this week – I keep saying I’m going to and then not doing it. I’m coming back to it this week
• Sleep 8.15 per night
• Breathwork/meditation
• Journaling
• Pre-bed relaxation – mobility/stretch/rolling

And my reminder affirmation for this week is:

💕 Its good for me to take time out and rest. If I haven’t achieved my results it’s just because I am not done yet. Every day is a step forward, I embrace any challenges as they are here to guide my growth 💕

Thanks for reading, if you are still here at this point. And if you have any of your own challenges that you are facing on your own journey then leave them down in the comments and if I can offer any support and advice then we can carry on the conversation there.

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Want to learn more about the stratagies I’m using and how they apply to your journey as a midlife woman looking to feel fitter, healthier and happier? Check out the Mindlife, Menopause & Weight Loss Workshop .