Losing Weight Isn't Your Goal.
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I'm glad OP knows exactly what I want to do with my body and my relationship with a body weight scale. Can OP tell me when my new phone case will arrive in the mail?
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I disagree with your "Goodest". Fat calipers are a poor way to measure for most. Even in good hands they have a high rate of error, and in not-so-good hands (which is far more often the case) they are extremely inaccurate.
I think your list of good, gooder, goodest is backwards. Calipers can be misused, tape measures can be pulled tighter or looser, pants don't lie. Pants are either loose or they aren't. But even they can misrepresent fat loss if you are bloated since water weight adds inches as well as pounds.0 -
Camp 2, here!2
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I used to be the same way as OP. I'd weigh whenever without any rhyme or reason. The only problem with this for me was that one week I'd be at my lowest in months and the next week I'd see a 7 lb gain. I would get frustrated and give up again. Mental weakness was my crutch. Now, I weigh in every morning after I wake up, use the bathroom, and get naked before showering. I see the gradual decline and it helps me to maintain focus. Just because I decide to go heavy on the chinese food the night before and wake up to a 4 lb gain doesn't mean that I gained 4 lbs. It means I'm retaining water. Being able to see a graph projecting my weightloss and showing those numbers has been a huge help to me. Mental weakness be damned. I'm going to continue to weigh in daily and keep my mind focused on the big picture.1
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While many of my clients goal is to lose weight, I try to focus on them getting fit. Because getting fit will usually require them to lose some weight anyway to attain it.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Yes! And getting fit causes one to want to move more and do more, which burns more calories for TDEE.0 -
I've just now reached the normal weight for my height bmi. At 5'3 and 139 I would gladly trade losing pounds on the scale for "ALL FAT LOSS" that surrounds my stomach.
I dont care to lose another pound but I have no choice if I want to get rid of this gut. I've lost over 30 pounds and am happy with the rest of my body, sadly I'm forced to lose more weight to get a flat stomach.
Dont know how to feel about it.
I hope this is the part when they say the stomach is last to go? I'm pretty lean elsewhere.
I'll just keep lifting and dieting until I say screw it.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »I disagree with your "Goodest". Fat calipers are a poor way to measure for most. Even in good hands they have a high rate of error, and in not-so-good hands (which is far more often the case) they are extremely inaccurate.
I think your list of good, gooder, goodest is backwards. Calipers can be misused, tape measures can be pulled tighter or looser, pants don't lie. Pants are either loose or they aren't. But even they can misrepresent fat loss if you are bloated since water weight adds inches as well as pounds.
Fair enough. My main point was to bring awareness to a shift in mindset for those who DO rely entirely on a scale. My experience with calipers has been a good one and one I find, when consistently checked every week, does yield a more measurable trend than the scale.1 -
Camp 2 as well. Daily weighing has helped me learn about what my body does. For example, I "gain" during ovulation. I never knew this until I started weighing daily and noticed that trend over a few months. The scale readings combined with my app to track my cycle helped me put 2 and 2 together, so now I don't fret over seeing that jump.1
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ummijaaz560 wrote: »I've just now reached the normal weight for my height bmi. At 5'3 and 139 I would gladly trade losing pounds on the scale for "ALL FAT LOSS" that surrounds my stomach.
I dont care to lose another pound but I have no choice if I want to get rid of this gut. I've lost over 30 pounds and am happy with the rest of my body, sadly I'm forced to lose more weight to get a flat stomach.
Dont know how to feel about it.
I hope this is the part when they say the stomach is last to go? I'm pretty lean elsewhere.
I'll just keep lifting and dieting until I say screw it.
You might need to start lifting weight if you don't already. My stomach is always the last to go, and it is much smaller than it used to be but there is still some pudginess there. I'm at a healthy weight and BMI for my height, and I know that lifting will help it go down quicker than doing cardio solely, but I don't know what I'm doing in the weight's section, I can't afford a PT right not, and I really can't afford a gym membership right now that has a good free weights section, so I'm just taking it slowly and hoping that once I hit my goal weight range it will look a bit smaller.1 -
Camp 2 as well. Daily weighing has helped me learn about what my body does. For example, I "gain" during ovulation. I never knew this until I started weighing daily and noticed that trend over a few months. The scale readings combined with my app to track my cycle helped me put 2 and 2 together, so now I don't fret over seeing that jump.
This is good stuff with a long view combined with a holistic, grounded mindset. When you understand scale weight vs. fat loss divided by consistency... numbers become less a "thing" and more an "informer". Thanks for sharing!1 -
Yes, I think maybe women who are already used to tracking fertility may have an advantage in the weighing every day method - they know their bodies well and are used to interpreting.Camp 2 as well. Daily weighing has helped me learn about what my body does. For example, I "gain" during ovulation. I never knew this until I started weighing daily and noticed that trend over a few months. The scale readings combined with my app to track my cycle helped me put 2 and 2 together, so now I don't fret over seeing that jump.
This is good stuff with a long view combined with a holistic, grounded mindset. When you understand scale weight vs. fat loss divided by consistency... numbers become less a "thing" and more an "informer". Thanks for sharing!0 -
Camp 2 as well. Daily weighing has helped me learn about what my body does. For example, I "gain" during ovulation. I never knew this until I started weighing daily and noticed that trend over a few months. The scale readings combined with my app to track my cycle helped me put 2 and 2 together, so now I don't fret over seeing that jump.
Ditto. Because of the water retention at ovulation and premenstrually (and because Lyle McDonald said to) I compare myself to last month, not last week.
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I used to be the same way as OP. I'd weigh whenever without any rhyme or reason. The only problem with this for me was that one week I'd be at my lowest in months and the next week I'd see a 7 lb gain. I would get frustrated and give up again. Mental weakness was my crutch. Now, I weigh in every morning after I wake up, use the bathroom, and get naked before showering. I see the gradual decline and it helps me to maintain focus. Just because I decide to go heavy on the chinese food the night before and wake up to a 4 lb gain doesn't mean that I gained 4 lbs. It means I'm retaining water. Being able to see a graph projecting my weightloss and showing those numbers has been a huge help to me. Mental weakness be damned. I'm going to continue to weigh in daily and keep my mind focused on the big picture.
I wonder why part of a Pu Pu platter and General Tso's chicken gives me this large temporary weight gain but Thai food, which presumably has similar sodium levels, does not? Is there some water-retaining property of fried food I'm not aware of?0 -
Oversimplifying, there are two camps.
OP is an eloquent advocate for one camp: Weigh infrequently, don't let the scale dominate you.
The other camp says: Weigh at the same time every day, under the same conditions (first thing in the AM, after bathroom, before eating, and naked is usually proposed). Record it. Over time, learn to understand your personal weight fluctuations, and what causes them. Knowledge is powerful, and the scale will never again be able to dominate you.
There are lots of variations and considerations of each, but that's the cartoon version.
Fundamentally, each person has to decide which approach best fits his or her personality and outlook.
I've done both of these and there are awesome benefits to both. If you weigh every day, you see the fluctuations and become numb to them. Get an app or use a spreadsheet and watch the trends, not the daily weights. Now that I've seen that, I swapped to monthly weigh in's. Either one can be stressful at times but you have to choose the one that fits your mental status at the time. And, yes, definitely do measurements! Especially if you are closer to goal and the pounds are coming off more slowly. It seems a lot of people get frustrated even when they admit their clothes are fitting and looking better so the numbers definitely do help.1 -
It is just so hard to try to do everything right and see the scale not going down
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People are on MFP for different reasons. Some are literally watching the weight drop on the scale. Some are bulking up; some are maintaining. Some have goals that are about strength or flexibility or endurance or willpower or personal motivations.
Personally, my goal is to get my waist under 32 inches (that is considered healthy for my height in the waist-to-height ratio) to try to reduce my lower back pain now and also my risk for cardiovascular disease later in life. I also want to be able to climb a wall, shoot a bow and arrow, ride a horse, and stand on my head one day in yoga. Do I need to drop about 25 lbs? Yes. So I watch the scale every day because I find that keeping a daily eye on it 1) educates me on fluctuations in my body, and 2) makes it easier to halt an unpleasant trend early on.
The scale hasn't budged much for me, yet, so the tape measure tells my story right now. So do the fit of my clothes and the contours of my waist and glutes. So do my cardiovascular markers like cholesterol, bp, and triglycerides. And so does the fact that I just upped the weight on my bar in my lifting class. The scale or tape measure are just one method to achieve the goals. It's the whole picture that's important, not just one color in the tapestry.2 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »I disagree with your "Goodest". Fat calipers are a poor way to measure for most. Even in good hands they have a high rate of error, and in not-so-good hands (which is far more often the case) they are extremely inaccurate.
I think your list of good, gooder, goodest is backwards. Calipers can be misused, tape measures can be pulled tighter or looser, pants don't lie. Pants are either loose or they aren't. But even they can misrepresent fat loss if you are bloated since water weight adds inches as well as pounds.
Fair enough. My main point was to bring awareness to a shift in mindset for those who DO rely entirely on a scale. My experience with calipers has been a good one and one I find, when consistently checked every week, does yield a more measurable trend than the scale.
I think it is good to raise awareness of weight fluctuations. I'm always surprised at how many people don't realize their weight fluctuates, but reading these forums it's impossible not to realize how many don't. But one can use a scale to measure fat loss and be aware of this. Or not.1 -
When you are very very newbie, know nothing about nothing, the scale is all you have. I came to MFP with only a scale and this app. I wanted to lose weight, period.. Nothing else mattered. The scale did have all of MY POWER.
Got closer to goal, was not happy. Then I started broadening my horizons and learn A LOT.. The goal was no longer weight, it was FAT loss.. then muscle gain, then fat loss again, and the cycle continues. eta: fitness, and not just looking pretty was very important through all stages weight loss, fat loss, etc. I just turned 48 so being a "capable" person is/was important too.
So until a person gets out of their realm of weight loss only and moves into the FAT loss realm these points come into play. And these points are great points from the entire thread.
BTW I am now in the second camp, and I use scale, measurements and calipers and photos..3 -
I want to lose weight. I want the scale to at least budge one pound.
I want to lose weight because it means I will lose FAT. My face won't look so big and round and my clothes will fit me, the ones that aren't made of stretch fabric.0
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