A peer support community, independent and not for sale. Since February 2024.

GLP CircleA peer support community

The plateau

The scales have not moved and my boots have. Both are true

Started 11 September 2025 · 8 replies · 332 hearts · read 2.9k times

LinnetKendal, UK · 11 September 2025
10 months ago

Kendal. Nine weeks of a flat stretch and I have decided to write down the other set of evidence, mostly for myself, because I keep forgetting it exists.

Things that have changed while nothing has changed. I did Helm Crag on the second of August. Not quickly, and I stopped twice, but I did it and I came down without my knee going. Last October I turned back at the second gate and sat in the car park eating a sandwich and feeling about ninety. My walking boots do up on the third hook now instead of the second, which is a very stupid measurement and it is mine. My blood pressure at the review in July was the lowest it has been since my forties and the nurse said oh, that is nice in a tone that suggested she does not say it often. I sleep through. I get up off the floor after the grandchildren without announcing it.

None of that shows up on a Thursday morning on a bathroom floor, and the Thursday morning is what I have been letting decide my mood since June.

I am not posting this as a lesson. I am posting it because I know at least four people in this circle are in the same flat stretch, and the thing I would have wanted at week three was somebody saying that the flat stretch and the improvement are not the same measurement and can happily disagree with each other for months.

What is your stupid measurement? I would genuinely like to collect some. The boot hook has done more for me than any number.

111

WilfStoke, UK
#1

Seventy-two. Mine is the allotment gate, which sticks, and which I used to have to shoulder. I lift it now with one hand and a bit of a shove. Nobody has ever congratulated me for it and I think about it every single morning.

Blood pressure much improved as well, which the doctor cares about and I do not, and the gate, which I care about and he does not.

44me too 6

TillyHereford, UK
#2

Two dogs, two walks. Mine is the second field. There is a field at the far end of the lane and for two years I turned round before it because of the stile, and in June I went over the stile without thinking about the stile.

Went home and cried in the utility room. Nothing on the scales that week either.

51me too 9

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK
#3

Linnet, I would like to gently name the one risk in a thread like this, and then get out of the way, because the thread itself is lovely.

Collecting other evidence works when it is genuinely yours. It stops working the moment it becomes a thing you are supposed to feel better about — at which point it is just homework with a nicer vocabulary. If you are in a flat stretch and somebody hands you a list of non-scale wins and you feel worse, that is not a failure on your part. Both these threads belong in this circle: the one where the other evidence helps, and the one where nothing helps and we sit with it.

46me too 8

NanNeath, UK
#4

Sixty-four and my knees have opinions, as advertised. Mine is the bus. I can get up the step of the number four without holding both rails, and the driver has stopped waiting for me with that patient face.

Small. Daily. Better than a Thursday morning.

38me too 5

LinnetKendal, UK
#5

The number four bus and the allotment gate. This is exactly what I wanted and I am writing every one of them in the back of my diary, with names next to them.

What I notice about all of yours is that not one is a measurement anybody else would recognise. A sticking gate. A driver who has stopped waiting. That is what makes them worth having — nobody can take them off you or tell you they do not count this week.

22me too 2

GethinMerthyr Tydfil, UK
#6

Ex-miner. Lungs, knees, determination. Mine is unglamorous: I do not have to plan where the benches are. Used to map a trip into town by benches. Now I just go into town.

Ada is right about the homework thing though. In March somebody gave me a list like this and I wanted to put it through the window. Different month, different use for it.

43me too 11

FlorrieBlackburn, UK
#7

Grandma of five, doing this for the floor-play, and that is my measurement — the floor. Down easily, up with one hand on the sofa, no announcement, no noise. Six months ago it was a whole production and the four-year-old had learned to wait for it.

47me too 7

AmbroseYork, UK
#8

Sixty-six, strength circle convert. Mine is measurable and boring: I can carry both shopping bags up the steps in one trip. That is thirty steps and two bags and it used to be two trips and a sit-down.

Nothing on the scales since May. I do not much mind, and I would not have believed in January that I would be able to write that sentence.

41me too 6