Addicted to the scales

You can be losing fat without the number on the scales going down, yes. Second the trending app, I finally have it through my thick skull that fluctuations are normal and aren't a reason to be dejected.

There's Libra for Android, Happyscale for iOS.

hipari wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

There's Libra for Android, Happyscale for iOS.

Yep, these are the apps. The trending apps calculate your ”true” weight loss and show what they call trendweight instead of scale weight, using rolling averages and other algorithms to calculate your true weight loss that gets masked behind the fluctuations.

If the numbers continue to bother you and you can afford it, get a smartscale that sends your weigh-in info straight to your phone and have it synced to the weight trending app. Then put a piece of tape over the screen on your smartscale so you don’t even see the number on the scale, and focus on what the weight trend app says. That way you can still get weigh-in data every day (unnecessary, but understandable) but can only check the numbers when you’re in the right state of mind.

To the bolded: No, they don't. Thinking that's what they do can trip people up. (I agree that they're very useful, BTW.)

What they really do is statistics-based calculations to give you a theory about the overall direction of your weight management efforts. The theory they produce, yes sort of a rolling average, can be less distorted than our brains' perception of daily scale weights, but it isn't magical "truth".

Recently, my trending app thought I was gaining, then maintaining, over a period of at least a month, when I knew I was actually losing fat very slowly. Sure enough, eventually the scale (and the trending app) reflected what I knew, from my trust in my process and trust in my knowledge of my calorie needs (after almost 6 years now of logging/tracking reasonably carefully). (FWIW, the context was that I'd added a couple of pounds of water weight from resuming progressive strength training, in a period when I was shooting to lose fat super slowly. That water retention distorted scale weight for quite a while, and deceived the trending app.)

Here's a different view:

We don't have a "true weight". When we step on a scale, we get *one* device's *momentary*
snapshot of our body's relationship with gravity. Drink a pint of water, eat a big 250g apple, that weight will change instantly.

Instead, I believe, what we have is a "current range", and a "long term trend".

Over the past week, my daily AM scale weight has ranged from 123.4 to 126.4. (No, not in linear fashion, rather up and down, with those as the low & high points somewhere along the way. If it matters for anyone's contextual understanding, I'm 5'5", so around the upper end of BMI 20-point-something, low normal.) So, 123.4 to 126.6 is my "current range".

At the end of December, after my November birthday and some holidays, again looking at a week, my then-current range was 125.6 to 128.6. Conclusion: I've lost weight, from the end of December to now, *roughly* a pound a month. (Since I'm mostly in maintenance now, I haven't lost much, which is fine. Don't wanna buy new jeans!)

I'm probably being touchy about terminology here, I admit. There was one dude who was majorly angry when he went through the effort of installing and putting weight data into a trending app, only to learn - shockers! - that it didn't tell him his "true weight".

They're good tools. I like mine. It's still not a magical "true" anything, just a help.

As always, just my opinion.

sarahlovesfood25 wrote: »

Im addicted to the scales and when they do t go down i lose motivation.
Can you still lose weight and the scales be the same number?
probly a silly question 🤪

What does addicted to the scale mean?

Some people weigh daily, and have an excel doc of their weight outlining any changes. Others have weighed and logged consistently for years. Many of us use a weight trend app.

What is your idea of addicted mean? Maybe you’re just unsure how to feel about weight variations and the importance of tracking consistently for peace of mind? Let us know what you mean and we can help navigate with you.

If you're weighing yourself multiple times a day and it is having an effect on your mood and self esteem, then put the scales away for a while, go to weighing once a week. If you are strength training and you want to gauge progress then take measurements. Practice meditation and anti-anxiety measures, because you aren't really addicted to your scale, you are more likely overly anxious about your weight, which is also not good for your health.

You are more than a number on a scale.