Throwing out the Scale?

emmaps55
emmaps55 Posts: 54 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Well, I can't bring myself to do it -- but after 50+ years of weighing myself daily (and 7 years above 200 lbs) I have finally decided to stop weighing myself. It doesn't seem to help. All it does is tell me I still have so far to go. I'm not comparing myself to others, I'm comparing myself to when I was thinner (2003 -- 154 lbs) and happier, and all I do is come up short. So for me, it's not a motivator, it's a downer. I think it may be better to stop focusing on the number on the scale at all. I decided a week ago that I was going to track what I eat on MFP, and track my calorie burn on Fitbit, and I am not going to weigh myself for 30 weeks. I'll focus on doing the things I know work for me to lose weight -- weighing/measuring my food, getting exercise, building a daily deficit -- and leave the results (ie, the number on the scale) up to whatever weight god is out there....

I feel more confident about making this change because on October 6 I got a DEXA body composition test that told me I weigh 195.9 with an astounding 54.5% body fat. In May I will go back and get tested again, and my goal is to lose 20 lbs of fat in those 7 months. I realized I really don't have to weigh myself till then. I just have to do what it will take to lose about 3 lbs a month-- setting the bar lower than I ever have before, to about .7 lbs a week.

What do you think? I feel like I'm missing the thrill of watching the trajectory move lover each week (by not tracking my daily weight.) But on the other hand, the thrill hasn't helped me much these past 7 years. Maybe it doesn't matter to know at what rate I'm losing. I can, at the end of 7 months, figure out what level of deficit led to what level of weight loss. And on a daily basis, it is a relief not to have to weigh myself and feel good/bad about myself based on a stupid number on a stupid scale.

Replies

  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,603 Member
    If you don't want to weigh yourself, you shouldn't! :)
  • emmaps55
    emmaps55 Posts: 54 Member
    Oh BTW, I'm really 58 not 78 years old. But my metabolism seems so slow that I set my age higher so that my daily calorie requirements on MFP are more in line with what Fitbit says I burn when I am totally sedentary (about 1650). Then I add exercise calories in and eat some or all of what MFP says I've earned via exercise.
  • bigsistruck
    bigsistruck Posts: 125 Member
    I stopped weighing myself a few months ago. Clothes/how you look in the mirror is a much better and more motivating indicator. Getting rid of the scale has made me not so obsessive, a number doesn't matter to me anymore and I like it!
  • emmaps55
    emmaps55 Posts: 54 Member
    Yes, I am so eager to be relieved of the obsession! It's good to hear about your experience with this. Thanks!
  • leggup
    leggup Posts: 2,942 Member
    emmaps55 wrote: »
    What do you think? I feel like I'm missing the thrill of watching the trajectory move lover each week (by not tracking my daily weight.) But on the other hand, the thrill hasn't helped me much these past 7 years.

    I view scale weight as data. I check the data to make sure it's going in the right direction. I also know what impacts the data. I don't think that the scale had anything to do with your lack of motivation/weight loss the last 7 years. Why did you keep doing the same thing (weighing every day, not changing your diet/exercise habits) if you saw that it wasn't working?

    When I started calorie counting, I saw results right away. I have seen consistent results ever since. The results have slowed since I have begun to approach my goal, but there's still an overall trend. I set my Report view to 3 months so that I can see the overall trend, not the noise of individual data points.

    I don't understand how you were obsessively checking your weight and seeing it stay the same (or going up) and not doing anything about it/not doing something that worked. How can you be obsessed with something halfway?
  • emmaps55
    emmaps55 Posts: 54 Member
    Well, it's not accurate that I wasn't "doing anything" -- I dieted/exercised myself multiple times from 220 down to 200 over the past 7 years.....and when I stopped with the obsessive exercise, tracking, etc. and just lived "normally", the weight came back on within a couple of months. I lose incredibly slowly and gain very quickly. But dieting/weighing only helped to keep me within that range of weight. If I hadn't done anything, I would have been back up to the 230 lbs I weighed 20 years ago. (The other difficulty was untreated hypothyroidism where my new doctor took me off thyroid meds in 2007 and I gained 25 lbs by 2009.) Even being back on meds since 2009 did not make the weight come off... and then I hit menopause....

    I think the issue for me is to find something that works over the weeks and months it will take me to get back down to my goal weight of 150. Being consistent over such a long period is the difficulty I have faced, and that's where I think weighing myself isn't helpful, because it just tells me what I already know, that I have a long way to go.

    I'm glad it was easier for you and that the weight has come off consistently for you.
  • girlviernes
    girlviernes Posts: 2,402 Member
    You know yourself best, the number is just a number, how you feel in clothes and what you are able to do with your body is much more important. Things change and 153 may not be the right number for you any more. The right number could be higher... or lower. Part of the journey is about opening up to really knowing yourself and your body as it is now.

    All that said, the scale does usually provide useful data as to whether what you are doing is working and it can help you to stay focused. If you aren't going to weigh yourself, you may want to measure instead. I weigh daily and find that helpful, but at the same time I tend to be more avoidant than obsessive, so it mostly helps me stay focused and I don't worry about the number particularly. If you decide to weigh, it might help to write down all the negative/unhelpful thoughts you tend to have about the number and write down challenges to all of them and before you weigh, think through what you want your response to be to the number (whether it is up or down). For example, if you last weighed 195, before you get on the scale ask yourself, what if I weigh 197 today? What do I want to remind myself? (Maybe... well I had a lot of sodium yesterday, so I can expect some water weight, or remember self, this is a journey and there are some ups and downs but I'm still doing the right things, or I have been tracking carefully and eating well, so if the number is up I'll post at MFP for some help with my diary to see if I'm missing anything).
  • emmaps55
    emmaps55 Posts: 54 Member
    <You know yourself best, the number is just a number, how you feel in clothes and what you are able to do with your body is much more important. Things change and 153 may not be the right number for you any more. The right number could be higher... or lower. Part of the journey is about opening up to really knowing yourself and your body as it is now.>

    Thanks for your thoughtful response -- Maybe that's at the heart of my wanting not to weigh -- I want to know/appreciate/move my body, enjoy how I feel in my clothes -- and just want to enjoy my life each day -- and it's all been so wound up in what I weigh... a low number would be momentarily pleasing until I would think "But I have 5 lbs to lose to ge back to my lowest weight in 2007" -- crazy thinking like that. A higher weight would just depress me. (I did keep a running weekly average so that did smooth out some of the ups and downs.) But I have never been able to see the number on the scale as "just a number." Maybe some day I will....

    The funny thing is, up till now, I could tell you what I would weigh before I even got on the scale, so maybe I did know my body better than I think I did! Because I haven't been this weight or lower in so many years, I don't really know what 185 or 175 or even 165 will feel like, and you're right that it will feel differently than it did at 10 years younger. So maybe it's good not to attach a feeling to a number... anyway, just musing.... we'll see how it goes. Thanks again.
  • girlviernes
    girlviernes Posts: 2,402 Member
    I like this: scale.jpg
  • Lourdesong
    Lourdesong Posts: 1,492 Member
    For me, I think tracking my progress on the scale is similar to tracking progress through pictures. Something that, if not done, will be regretted one day. You have years of data, and you know what that data taken collectively or analyzed in detail is telling you. Just as pictures tell a story, so does the scale. Hiding from the scale or the camera doesn't change reality.
  • Chief_Rocka
    Chief_Rocka Posts: 4,710 Member
    The best way to solve a problem is to ignore it, I always say.
  • girlviernes
    girlviernes Posts: 2,402 Member
    Chief_Rocka wrote: »
    The best way to solve a problem is to ignore it, I always say.

    She is actually doing something about the problem by making a change in her behavior and trying something new. She has been weighing for years and that didn't "solve" the "problem."

    Something to think about though, OP, is that you may find your experience with weighing to be different if you do so less often, for example weekly or monthly. The mere act of checking something very frequently can feed obsessiveness, but that doesn't mean that you need to avoid it altogether.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    Duct tape over the front, then you can get on it if you need to, you just can't see anything. Eventually, you'll get tired of it.
  • dbanks80
    dbanks80 Posts: 3,685 Member
    I've started taking pictures. I never used to take pictures. I weigh myself once a month. If I weigh myself weekly or daily i get discouraged and start sabotaging myself. Its just a number. I look at my BF% how i look in the mirror and how my clothes fit. I look at what I can accomplish physically instead of what the scale says and I am a much happier content person.
  • emmaps55
    emmaps55 Posts: 54 Member
    Thanks everyone! Good points. Maybe I could weigh myself monthly, and maybe that's something to try before going completely "cold turkey." I also like the idea of pictures.... especially in clothes that are just a little too tight, as a month would make a difference. (I would duct tape over it, but my husband uses it too.)

    Love the picture, Girlviernes -- thanks! Maybe I'll tape it to the scale.

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