I'm on week #4:of my no weighing-in experiment. I have to admit that I'm now curious about what the scale would say. The main reason is that I don't "feel" like I've lost weight despite diligently tracking. On that topic, I had a rude awakening this week. I was traveling and ate at the same restaurant twice. I'd eaten there a month ago, so my standard order was already in my MFP tracker. It's a breakfast order from a chain, and I'd even tracked components separately to compare to the "meal" listed in the tracker - - all had green check marks. A couple days ago, I dug a little further and discovered the MFP entries I used were likely each off by about 400 calories. It was too late to try to claw back some of those calories for the week. But lesson learned. Tracker has been updated with correct values.

I'm going to try to pop into a WW Studio tomorrow and do a weigh-in but not learn the weight. I think I'll want a four-week data point when this is over. I'm tempted to confirm with the WW staff member whether I'm down at least 1.5 pounds. We'll see.

As I said above, despite consistently being in what should be a calorie deficit, I don't "feel" like I've lost weight. I took measurements a couple weeks ago to have as a reference in another six-eight weeks. I still think I've made the right choice by doing this. It has certainly kept me focused on tracking.

If you read this far, thanks and have a great weekend!

@crewahl Yep, I'm definitely in loss mode, Charlie. I started this experiment because I felt I was letting the scale mess with my head too much, and the result of that was that my eating/dieting behaviors were inconsistent. So in an effort to truly focus on/isolate my behaviors, the questions I asked myself were:

1) What would happen if I just made a diligent effort to stick to a calorie deficit and accurately track for an extended period and didn't solicit any feedback from the scale?

2) How much weight would I lose if I consistently ate in a REASONABLE deficit.

3) Do I trust myself to accurately track in a timely manner?

The analogy I'll make is that I'd come to view the scale as an annoying and fickle supervisor whose feedback on my weekly work was rarely reflective of the effort I was putting in. When I tried harder to please the supervisor, my work habits frequently suffered, I was stressed and I disliked the job. So instead of quitting, I decided to fire the supervisor for awhile to see what kind of results I'd get without it. I'm confident I've been consistently in a calorie deficit, and I haven't been a bit stressed about my "work." Even the under-recording of the meal I mentioned in my earlier post didn't stress me out like it would have if I'd had to weigh in today. I was like, "Dang it. That was kind of a rookie move." Because what really matters for my weight loss is that I'm so in tune with trying to accurately track that I did discovered that mistake. Diligent and accurate tracking (at a deficit) is my focus right now.

I didn't set a weight goal when I started the experiment, and I've gone back and forth on whether I should have an expectation. Twelve weeks is not that long in the scheme of things. And given that my weight loss has stalled since July, losing one pound a month would be an improvement. But since I'm committed to tracking, I suspect (not expect) it will be more. But who knows? I haven't previously allowed myself to eat as much as I'm currently eating when I'm in loss mode. That slight increase in calories is really helping me not feel stressed.

I know this was long. Thanks for listening. 😀