Groovybabe

Scales are funny things, don’t you think? We, as a culture, put so much importance in what they tell us. There are women - and indeed men - up and down our respective countries basing their mood that day on what the scales tell them. Because they say one of three things:

“OMGzzzzzzzzz!!!! You fat oaf! Get off me now and don’t come back until you can take your body seriously!”

“Same old, same old. Nothing new here. When are you actually going to put some effort into weightloss?”

“You rock my socks, owner of thee! You are FANTASTIC! You are capable, you can do anything now. No one in this world can touch you!”

The advice has been for many years to only weigh in once per week, suggesting that anything more than that can/will lead to obsession and consequential failure. Thankfully the professionals are starting to realise there is more to us dieters than meets the eye as they are now coming around to the idea that weighing once per day is actually helpful to keeping on track.

I know for me, when I started to lose weight I weighed in every day. I would limit myself to once per day, once I had woken up - after toilet and before breakfast - and this would give me an idea of how I was doing on my journey. It is tempting, as above, to read too much into the number starring back at you but if you can learn to take it just as a number like I have then it can be very helpful. The way I see it is if you have lost, you know you are doing great and can continue as before. If you’re the same, you’re doing okay but could try a little harder and if you have gained then today is the day you need to look at what you are doing and cut back accordingly.

I will admit when I was first dieting it was hard to take a laidback approach to the scales. But over the last year or so I have learned that what the scales say don’t matter as much as your attitude to them, and indeed to weightloss. They do have some importance, I know for example that when I avoid the scales I am not very motivated and need to get back on track. But when I am weighing in daily I can now take the reading as if someone were giving me some well intentioned advice: I take what they are saying onboard and make an internal decision as to whether I want to act on their advice.

Once I got back on track this time I started weighing daily again. The first two days I weighed in at 15.3, then I went down to 15.2 and then back up to 15.3! I was being good! Having no more than 1600 calories each day so I knew there was other factors at play. My intellectual side was telling me the scales MUST be giving a false reading and as long as I keep on doing what I am doing then the weight will drop significantly in the next few days. I was due on and put the stubbornness of the scales down to this. This morning I came on so I predicted there would be a drop in the scales. When I hopped on them I found out my faith in my old friend was not misguided, as I’d dropped 3lbs to 15.0!!!

So, the moral of the story is thus: if the scales are not giving you your desired reading but you know you are doing everything right, have confidence in your ability to lose and don’t let the scales get the better of you. If you keep doing everything right you will see a drop eventually if not sooner.

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