I won’t go into my personal history with the scale. Mostly because it’d be a whole blog post (or series of) by itself. What I will say is that this one inanimate object (it really is inanimate people!) seems to wield a lot of power over us – how we think, how we feel about ourselves and, sometimes, what we do or do not eat.
So I thought I’d go over a few “scale mistakes” if you will. Things people do that actually helpthe scale to drive them crazy. I purposely refrained from putting “weighing every day” on the list. I’ve heard from many of you that you feel you need to weigh every day for accountability and if you are using it to do that, I can’t really argue with that (although I personally don’t do it). But here are a few other scale mistakes I see people make all the time!
You weigh at different times of the day.
In a life existence where two pounds lost or gained can be the difference between elation and utter discontent, it confounds me that people weigh at various points of different days.
There are several reasons why our weight fluctuates throughout the day and they can basically be boiled down to this: you “take in” matter during the day. Matter has weight. That weight will show up on the scale.
If you drink 16 oz. of water right before stepping on the scale, you’re adding a full pound onto your body weight (provided you didn’t use the bathroom before weighing). Each meal you eat adds weight, not necessarily as weight gained but matter that is sitting in your digestive system. And, of course, poop has weight too.
Bottom line: Try to weigh around the same time every day if you MUST weigh every day. That will give you a more accurate idea of how you are progressing.
You weigh several times a day.
And for the life of me I can’t figure out why! Yes, you may see incremental changes but there is no good reason you need to weigh yourself multiple times a day. As I said in the above point, you are more likely to weigh more as the day progresses than less (there are, of course, exceptions to that rule), so unless you like feeling bad about yourself, pick a time, adhere to it and do it once!
Bottom line: Weighing several times a day can be symptomatic of a thinking process that isn’t entirely balanced and healthy. Only you know whether that’s the case for you. If it is, know this: unhealthy thinking (most times) breeds unhealthy behavior. When we work toward a healthy mindset, healthy habits and healthy results are more likely to follow.
You weigh after exercising.
My trainer was the first person to let me know what a bad idea that is (unless, in my opinion, you consistently do it at that time so you can see the overall change and not just the change from before you work out). Especially when strength training, you are tearing muscle and exerting yourself. The body uses many things, including water, to recover from those activities. I’ve had more people than I can count email me distraught because they “gained weight” from exercise.
A small uptick in weight after starting or bumping up an exercise regimen can be normal. NOTE: Excessive gain is NOT. Yes muscle is more dens than fat (it does not weigh more than fat but it is denser) but even that isn’t going to cause a significant weight gain. More than a few pounds that stick around more than a few days and I’d say you may need to look at what you’re doing and adjust (I am, of course, not a nutritionist or a fitness professional, however, so your first step might be to seek out one of the two.)
Bottom line: Exercise can cause weight fluctuations and we should not expect to see instantaneous results on the scale from exercising. So afterward is probably not the best time to weigh, especially if you are weighing several times a day!
You allow the scale to dictate your actions.
Sigh. I used to be guilty of this one myself. If my weight didn’t come in where I wanted it to be, I skipped a meal. Or I exercised long and hard without properly fueling my body (and more than once hurt myself!). I’ve heard of people doing the opposite: being distressed by what the scale says and going on to make unhealthy eating choices or throwing their hands up and saying, “why bother!” with regards to exercise.
Bottom line: Weight loss is a tricky process. It’s not ever something the human body wants to do nor is it what the human body is built to do. Thus, you are going to face challenges. There will be stalls. Long ones. There will be points where you have to push harder, longer and almost reach your breaking point before you see a downward trend on the scale. But take heart. Your body is changing. It’s even possible for your body to be shrinking even if the number on the scale isn’t! But being reactive isn’t going to help. In my nearly 6 years as a post-op I can say I have never, EVER seen that mentality end well.
You avoid the scale altogether.
Yep. I just extolled the possible dangers of weighing too much and here I am talking about weighing too infrequently. But that’s also dangerous. Many times we know when we’re not doing right. And sometimes we avoid the scale because it will confirm what we already know to be true. Maybe you’ve lost control. Maybe it’s been a stressful few weeks. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Bottom line: Well guess what? An importantpart of living a healthier life is taking responsibility for your actions and deciding what to do next. So you ate two slices of cake over the weekend. So make a plan to work it off! But the only thing avoiding the scale does is fuels your perception of your weight. And that’s where the danger comes in. Having interacted with thousands of post-ops through our blog I can say that we nearly always perceive our weight as higher than it actually is. So if you are going off a higher perceived weight, you are more likely to be depressed about your weight, more likely to react in depression to that weight, more likely to stress about it (and produce cortisol which actually, physically does aid weight gain) and you’re more likely to fall back on unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Instead, get the facts. The data may be painful to look at but at least it’s objective and you can work from reality and NOT perception.
So there you have it. I invite debate about these points. There are probably even more but I highlighted the top five that I see.
The bottom line to this whole post is that, like our surgeries, the scale is a tool to help you get where you want to go. It, in and of itself, does not narrate your success story. Stop giving an inanimate object so much power in your lives!
No comments:
Post a Comment