Why You Can't Let the Scale Get You Down

ZugTheMegasaurus

Today, I got on the scale and saw a .2 pound gain. And while it's easy for me to tell other people that it doesn't matter, it's not that much, it'll just come off later, it's just water, all of that, it doesn't make it any easier to see it myself. So I'm not going to lie, I was pretty bummed.

Today was also the day I was going to do my measurements (which I do every 3 weeks). I didn't really want to, seeing as my weight was up. But my OCD isn't going to let me screw up the numbers, so I took them. And the results were rather shocking. Here's a chart:



Not only was I happy to have lost more inches, when I did the math, I found out that out of all the inches I've lost, a full THIRD of them have been lost in just the last three weeks. And in that time, I've lost only five pounds!

In other words, while I've noticed a dropoff in the rate of weight loss and saw a gain in weight today, my measurements are changing at a more rapid pace than before.

Can I still be upset? No, not really. That fifth of a pound I gained could be for any reason, and I have no way of knowing what it is. But the fact that I very quickly dropped a huge number of inches during the time my weight loss slowed tells me that I'm still doing something right. Besides that, the way my body feels and looks is more important than what exactly it weighs.

The moral of the story is that you can't let your measure of weight be your measure of success. The scale can tell you one thing but other methods of gauging progress might tell you the opposite. I hope that this little story might be motivating for someone out there.

AZackery

Congratulation on your loss ZugTheMegasau. I don't focus on my scale weight.