I see a lot of us expressing our understandable frustration at plateauing or even gaining weight despite being on NS, and I look back on my journey so far and see that there were times when I stalled, or even gained from one week to the next. I thought about the things that made me fail. And when I look back, I see that, for me, it really boiled down to the fact that I stopped following the system exactly as instructed. I initially wrote this post on my blog, but I got such positive feedback I thought to put it on the discussion board.

Nutrisystem laid it out for me very clearly. But, whether through laziness, or overconfidence that "I know what I'm doing now," or whatever, I insisted on making excuses and not following the simple instructions, to the point where it didn't work anymore.

I was in denial and would SWEAR that I was following the system "just like they said." And then I would whine to my wife, "It's not working." "I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing."

In my denial, my wife called me out on it, and started pointing out all the things I stopped doing. And once I restarted doing all the basics and recommendations that we all hear about, my weight loss continued.

For example:

1. Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. "Yeah, yeah, how important could this be?" "I'm too busy." "I'll have to pee too much." It sounds counterintuitive to losing weight, but drinking water and staying hydrated prevents your body from retaining water because it knows it has enough.

2. LOG your food. ALL of it. "I'm REALLY too busy for this one." "That cookie doesn't need to get logged in." "It's too complicated." "I don't know how much 3 oz weighs." I was researching what are the things that people who lose weight and are able to keep it off long term do. One of the things was to log your food. From my experience this holds true. When I know what and how much I eat, I can know when I'm eating too much (or too little), before I get there. I had to BE HONEST with myself.

3. Eat every three hours, literally. "I sometimes forget" "I'm not hungry in the morning" "I'm too busy to eat that often." I think for many of us, this could be a big one. We eat too infrequently and then complain we are hungry. I find that by eating every 3 hours, by the time I'm really hungry, I'm usually at most an hour away from my next meal. Also, eating regularly every 3 hours keeps our metabolism churning, and prevents us from going into starvation mode.
Even though I lost a bunch in the beginning, I stalled eventually because I wasn't getting enough calories. Now I make sure to always get over my 1500 calorie mark. Never under. Even if I'm over by 100 calories, I still lose weight better than when I was consistently around 100 calories or more below.

4. Get plenty of sleep (at least 6-8 hours). "I'm too busy" "I have kids" "My job doesn't let me." Since I weigh myself in the morning and at night, I've noticed that I lose more weight when I get more hours of sleep. Maybe the body works on getting rid of fat while we sleep? Not sure why.

5. Eat 4 servings of vegetables a day (at least). "I hate vegetables" "What's a vegatable?" "I can't find a vegetable I like." I found veggies a great way to keep myself full for the least amount of calories. I eventually found a veggie I liked, and guess what? It led to me finding others that I liked. And now I even like some that I used to dislike. (I still hate beets though.) And it's a great way to get full with minimal calories.

6. Eat smartcarbs and power fuels listed in the Nutrisystem list. "I'll have that pizza count as my smart carb." "I'm not in the mood for having protein now." "That McDonald's Filet-o-Fish is a combo smartcarb and power fuel." There's a ton in the lists they provide. We have plenty of options.

7. Eat the serving sizes they recommend. "Oh, but I LOVE peanut butter, 1 tablespoon is just too little" "I'm still hungry, I'll eat another Nutrisystem lunch entree" "What's the difference, one slice of bread or two." While any one thing probably doesn't matter, over the course of a day and week, it will.

8. Eat ALL the calories you're supposed to for the day. "If I'm supposed to eat 1500 calories, then 1300 calories will make me lose weight faster." I knew I was supposed to eat 1500 cal, and that less would put me in starvation mode, but for some illogical reason, I still couldn't help thinking that if I held back, I would lose weight better. Why starve yourself?

9. Call a counselor when you're stuck. "I'm too embarrassed." "I know what they'll say, why bother." "I don't feel like waiting on the phone for them." For me, I had to get over any embarrassment or laziness and just call. They had some great ideas. Sometimes, no ideas, but just encouragement to keep doing what I was doing. But not to give up after a week, or two, or even three of no movement.

10. Actually, TRY IT OUT and follow what the counselor recommends. "Ha! Switch lunch and dinner?! Useless!" "Keep doing what I'm doing and just wait?! I've waited two weeks already." Have faith. What have we got to lose? By following the NS plan, it's not like I'm eating worse than I was before, right?

11. If you're not losing weight on the scale, look at other things that may be improving. "I weigh more than last week, this is the 3rd week already, it isn't working." I completely freaked out when this happened.... so many weeks in a row... the scale was just hovering around the same weight. I wasn't making the progress I once had. But my pants were looser, clothes fit better, and people were complimenting how good I look. These count too, I just had to recognize and APPRECIATE them.



Anyway, I had to get out of my denial,... that I was too busy, or any of those excuses. I mean, I wasn't too busy to gain all this weight, right? I just wasn't following directions, and devoting the time and effort the way I was devoting the time to drive to get fast food, or to watch tv, or to go to work, or to find any excuse not to do what I had to do to lose weight and get healthier.

So I'm not following ALL the Nutrisystem directions/recommendations, and then I expected Nutrisystem to still work? And then I was surprised when it didn't? Major denial for me.

I discovered that I couldn't just follow one or two of the recommendations, but rather I had to do ALL the recommendations at the same time to make it work. And now that I have, I've been able to, so far, (knock on wood), break through any plateaus and continue my weight loss. Do I ever have a splurge day? Sure I do, weekly now, actually. Do I ever not follow every single one of the recommendations? All the time. But at least now, I'm more reassured as to why NS is working or is not working, and I have some rules to go back and follow when I'm stuck.

Hope my mistakes can help others from not making them too. Thanks for reading.

(** I wrote this blog/message board post on NS and didn't want to lose it. So I figured I could copy and paste here as a reminder for us.)