Lenten Scale Diet Official Thread - Join us!
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I'm still going! I need some other peeps to tell me I'm not the only one!!
I'm starting to feel a little silly for not weighing...
Lets see ... Im still on
FzyFrog
Emily Sebastian
MegJO ...
Anyone else still abstaining out there?
I'm still here without the scale, too. Sorry I haven't checked in. It seems I think about the scale less and less...until I think about it! Then, I'm temporarily obsessed--we still have 4 more weeks of this! I'm going on a trip for 5 days this week where I know I'll be eating and drinking WAY more than I should. Hope I can control it!0 -
4 WEEKS AND STILL SCALE-LESS!0
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4 WEEKS AND STILL SCALE-LESS!
oops, I mean 3 weeks.
so last night I got on the scale for the first time because of a biggest loser challenge at my dance studio. I was sooooooo dissappointed. I GAINED 2 pounds! BUT when I got home my fam reminded me that muscle weighs more than fat and they can see a difference in me. so which is really more important?0 -
Some thoughts so far...
I like the freedom of not weighing... but I think not weighing in for as long as I have has made me be a little more lax than I'd normally be (especially on sodium!). I do like not having the weekly angst of "is this a good wi week or a bad one?". Right now i am thinking I may go to weighing every 2 weeks when this challenge is over... and look at spacing that out even more as I get closer to goal (assuming that when I get to even 20 pounds away from goal it is going to take a lot to lose weight since my bmr will be really low at that point!)0 -
Some thoughts so far...
I like the freedom of not weighing... but I think not weighing in for as long as I have has made me be a little more lax than I'd normally be (especially on sodium!). I do like not having the weekly angst of "is this a good wi week or a bad one?". Right now i am thinking I may go to weighing every 2 weeks when this challenge is over... and look at spacing that out even more as I get closer to goal (assuming that when I get to even 20 pounds away from goal it is going to take a lot to lose weight since my bmr will be really low at that point!)
I love this idea! I think I'll also weigh in once every two weeks once the challenge is over too!0 -
Some thoughts so far...
I like the freedom of not weighing... but I think not weighing in for as long as I have has made me be a little more lax than I'd normally be (especially on sodium!). I do like not having the weekly angst of "is this a good wi week or a bad one?". Right now i am thinking I may go to weighing every 2 weeks when this challenge is over... and look at spacing that out even more as I get closer to goal (assuming that when I get to even 20 pounds away from goal it is going to take a lot to lose weight since my bmr will be really low at that point!)
I love this idea! I think I'll also weigh in once every two weeks once the challenge is over too!
Sounds like a great plan! Maybe I'll see if I can do that too! Only 25 more days till weigh in! :bigsmile:0 -
I am still going strong! It was hard last week but still NO SCALE! WOOT0
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Hope everyone is still going strong without the scale!!!! I have a drs apt on Wednesday but I'm going to ask if I can step on backwards and have them not tell me. Hopefully they'll be able to do that for me! If not I'll just shut my eyes!
Happy April Fools! I go into work at 8p tonight, I'm still trying to think of a good prank to pull on my co-workers haha0 -
At work and surfing MFP - Found this post labeled "Why the Scale Lies" posted by Superwmn.
Long but very good!!!
Hi,
I found the following article, it cleared a lot up for me, thought I would post it here as it might be enlightening for others.......
Why the Scale Lies
As a personal trainer I’m constantly warning people that the scales are an evil contraption designed to make us feel bad about ourselves and so “diet clubs” can look down on you and say “have you been cheating” to make you feel even worse!
I constantly tell people over and over again that daily weighing is unnecessary, yet how many of you cannot break the ritual of hoping on the scales every day. Do your self a favour and throw the scales in the bin or my favorite, give them to someone you don’t like! If you can’t bring yourself to do either of those then you should definitely familiarize yourself with the factors that can influence its readings. When you factor in things like water retention, glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, fluctuations in your body weight is normal. The bathroom scale should not be looked upon as your sole guide of success or failure. Once you understand more about how the body works, you can free yourself from the daily battle with the bathroom scale.
Your body is made up of approximately 60% water. Daily fluctuations in the body’s water content can send scale-watchers into a panic if they don’t understand what’s happening. Two things that can influence water retention are water consumption and salt intake. As strange as it may sound, the less water that you drink, the more of it your body retains! If you are even slightly dehydrated your body will hang onto its water supplies, possibly causing the number on the scale to creep upward. So if you are thirsty, drink up as you are already dehydrated!
Excessive amounts of salt (sodium) in our diet can also play a big role in water retention. A single teaspoon of salt contains over 2,000 mg of sodium. As a guide, we should only eating between 1,000 and 3,000 mg of sodium per day, so it can be easy to go overboard. Sodium is a sneaky substance, its in nearly everything you eat and drink. The more highly processed a food is, the more likely it is to have a high sodium content. That is why, when it comes to nutrition I recommend sticking to the basics: fruits, vegetables, lean meat, beans, and whole grains. Be sure to read the labels on canned foods, frozen meals and anything that comes packaged in a box.
Women may also retain several pounds of water prior to menstruation. This is very common and the weight will likely disappear as quickly as it arrives. As with general water retention, pre-menstrual water-weight gain can be minimized by drinking lots of water, maintaining an exercise program, and keeping high-sodium processed foods to a minimum.
The body stores carbohydrates as glycogen. Think of glycogen as the fuel tank for daily living. Some of this glycogen is stored in the liver and some is stored the muscles themselves. This energy reserve weighs more than a pound and for every gram of glycogen stored the body stores approximately 4 grams of water. This can add up to 3-4 pounds of water weight when its stored. Your glycogen supplies, along with the stored water, will shrink during the day if you fail to take in enough carbohydrates. When this happens our weight will drop on the scales but its only temporarily because as soon as we eat a meal containing carbohydrates the body will fill the glycogen fuel tank along with storing water. It’s normal to experience glycogen and water weight fluctuations of up to 2 pounds per day even with no changes in your calorie intake or activity level. These fluctuations have nothing to do with fat loss, however I can imagine they would make the weekly weigh-in at the diet club frustrating, something I’m sure they don’t tell you about!
People also tend to forget the actual weight of the food that we eat on a daily basis will affect the number on the scale. So eating a big meal along with any drinks before hopping on the scale is only going to result in a higher reading. The 5 pounds you put on right after eating a huge meal with drinks is not fat, it’s the weight of the food and will be gone in several hours when the body has finished digesting it. For this reason, it’s a good idea to weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you’ve had anything to eat or drink.
In order to store one pound of fat we need to eat 3500 calories above our daily caloric needs. So if you take the above example, to actually store the above dinner as 5 pounds of fat, you would have to eat a massive 17,500 calories. This is highly unlikely, and in fact it’s probably not humanly possible(but please don’t try to prove me wrong!). So if the scale goes up 3 or 4 pounds overnight, relax, as it’s most likely increased water weight, glycogen, and the weight of your dinner. Bear in mind that the 3,500 calorie rule also works in reverse. If our goal is to lose one pound of fat you will need to burn an extra 3,500 calories more than you take eat. Generally, it’s only possible to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week. So when you follow a severely low calorie diet that causes your weight to drop 10 pounds in 7 days, it’s physically impossible for all of that to be fat. What you’re really losing is water, glycogen, and muscle.
This brings me to the scale’s sneakiest lie. The scale doesn’t just weigh fat; in fact it only tells you how heavy you are under gravity at that moment. So when you hope on the scale what it collectively weighs your muscles, bones, water, internal organs, in fact everything that is you. Losing weight and losing fat are two different things and in fact, the scale has no way of telling you what you’ve lost (or gained). With that in mind, if you have been on a restrictive diet and lost a lot of weight in a short period of time then you have probably lost a lot of muscle tissue. Losing muscle is nothing to celebrate. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, the more muscle you have the more calories your body burns on a daily basis, even while you are sat reading this. That’s one of the reasons why a fit, active person is able to eat considerably more food than the dieter who is painfully counting points and who is unwittingly destroying muscle tissue. Also if you are losing a lot of weight by crash dieting and not exercising and therefore by sacrificing muscle tissue you will not get the body transformation results you desire. You will just end up a smaller version of yourself. Or as one of my clients recently put it, a smaller fat person!
If you were to compare your muscles and fat to gold and feathers with one pound of fat being a big lumpy bag of feathers, and one pound of muscle as a small but extremely valuable piece of gold. Our goal would then be to get rid of the lumpy feathers and replace it with as much gold as possible. So in effect we would weigh exactly the same the only problem with the scale is that it doesn’t differentiate between the two. It can’t tell you how much of your total body weight is lean tissue (gold) and how much is fat (feathers).
Skin-fold calipers, hydrostatic (or underwater) weighing and bioelectrical impedance are all methods we can use to measure our body composition to discern whether we are losing (or gaining) fat and muscle and while none of these methods are 100% accurate, they offer a better way of measuring our bodies changes than the scale.
Now if the thought of being pinched, dunked, or gently electrocuted doesn’t appeal to you, don’t worry, one of the best measurement tool of all is a simple tape measure and your very own eyes. If the tape is showing that you have lost inches, your clothes fit better and the person looking back at you in the mirror is a leaner, fitter more confident person who isn’t bound by different coloured days then surly that is a better judge of your success than the lies from the bathroom scale.
Do yourself a favour and buy yourself a big hammer and introduce it to the springy, beady eyed lying menace, not only will you release a lot of built up tension but you will feel better for it, (just be sure to wear the correct safety clothing)!
Train Hard, Eat Smart!
http://marckent.com/288/why-the-scale-lies/0 -
Can't remember on which thread I declared that I'll stay off the scales for Lent .... but anyway I haven't weighed myself since the 6th of March. I have just returned from a 3 week holiday in South Africa - so it is probably a good thing. Saying that, I am quite pleased that I did not over-indulge and also that I exercised (walking) for the first 2 weeks of my holiday... tomorrow is back to work, tracking my food on MFP and exercising. I hope to not gain or perhaps even lose 2lbs by the time I weigh myself again ...0
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So... now that it is April I *really* want to weigh in! (sigh). Thinking of taking measurements... though I don't have much faith in my ability to be consistent in where I measure so I don't put much stock in those. It has been a few months though, so surely I'll see *some* change! Off to find the tape measure...0
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OK, I have been TOTALLY M.I.A. ... but in my defense, I was out there kicking *kitten* and taking names!!! :bigsmile:
Still haven't weighed yet *yay* And it has been HARD lately... knowing that Friday has been a full month... seeing that stupid "28" on my ticker that hasn't moved... having lots of friends and family ask how much I've lost, b/c "you look great!" and saying, "um, I'm not really sure--it's complicated"... completing 2 weeks of 3,500 cals burned and not being able to judge if it is making a difference... UGH!!! But, those things that are annoying the heck out of me have also led to a lot of great NSVs, too!
FOR THOSE OF YOU STILL HANGING IN HERE--can we make a quick list of our NSVs during this "diet"? I think that could help re-motivate me, and I'm sure a few other folks as well :happy: I look foward to hearing some great responses and helping each other stay on track!
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Good idea with the NSVs.
-I can notice a differenc ein my jeans. They are loose for sure.
-One of the reasons I knew I needed to change was because my seatbelt clicker thing started to dig into my hip, I remember the very first time I noticed it I looked down to see what was poking me, I then realized I'd just gotten so big that there wasn't enough room for me AND the seatbelt. Well, over the last month I'm happy to report that it no longer digs into me and I can drive comfortably.
-The exercise thing has really clicked for me since we gave up the scale. I find that 3 miles of walking isn't enough so I'm pushing myself to do 4 and 6 miles more often. When I wake up I eat breakfast and sign onto MFP then I figure out when I can make time to go for a walk or to the gym. I no longer dread it, I find it empowering.
Can't wait to read everyone's NSVs!!!
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I have a GIANT *kitten*. Yes, I said it. We're talking ginormous ghetto booty! I have been in a size 16 for quite some time. Around September/October last year they started getting really tight. Around Thanksgiving I bought a pr of junior size 17 from Lane Bryant. They were even a smidge snug. I joined MFP Jan 6. I've been noticing that I have to "hitch" up these size 17s lately. Today, I took a potty break and just for kicks decided to try and pull my pants down without unbuttoning them just to see how far down I could get them. Guess what??? They came all the way off. I completely pulled my pants down and over my gigantic butt and huge saddlebags without unbuttoning them!!
I also just got back from vacation on Monday. While on vacation I went shopping. For sh*ts and giggles I thought I'd try on a size 14 just to see how much more I needed to lose before I could get them on. They went up over my hips, then my butt with only a slight struggle. I even got them buttoned. Of course, that pushed all my guts up to my boobs, but I got them on and buttoned. And you know what? I bought them!0 -
At first I was fine with not weighing in..I didn't find it as hard as I thought I would. I have been thinking about it a lot lately though..I guess since it's only like 2 1/2 weeks away..but the good thing is that I haven't given in! I'm sorta excited to weigh in though..actually can't wait to step on and see the results. I must say though, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) nsv was getting to the gym even though I was tired and not feeling well tonight..I told myself that even just a half hour could make a difference and ended up there..I felt better after I came home. Stick with it everyone - we can do this!0
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NSV for me has been going on holiday to South Africa (my birth country) for 3 weeks and managing not to overeat on South African foods (as I normally do when we go on holiday there.) Also I got some exercise whilst on holiday - not as much as I could have, but much more that I have ever done before on holiday! Another NSV has been that I have been able to get straight back into logging my food on MFP and exercising every day after work. It has been a horrid first week back at work - but I did not 'comfort' eat and I still exercised after work even though I was knackered...0
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Couple hours left until we have just 2 weeks to go!!!!!
I'm so excited!!! 0 -
Couple hours left until we have just 2 weeks to go!!!!!
I'm so excited!!!
Finally...I can hardly wait! After all this time, I better have a huge loss to celebrate Easter morning! ;-)0 -
Tell me about it!!!! Although, I was in a massive 2 month plateau going into this challenge so I'll take ANY that if its just below 212!!!!0
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Hey everyone, sorry I've been gone for a while, had some laptop problems!
I gave up on the giving up the scale, but I've not been on as much as I used to. I got on today and the day before yesterday, but before that it was a few days. This is a massive improvement for me as I was up to 3 times daily before.
Hope you're all doing ok.
red x0
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