Looking back at my many battles with the bathroom scale, I realize how much of that effort was useless. After all, the goal is not to weight an "x" amount of kilograms or pounds, not even to reach your optimum BMI (body mass index). The goal is to live an active and healthy lifestyle with good eating habits. And focusing solely on numbers of kilograms or pounds lost can get on the way of reaching that goal.
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| Experiment Data Entry#1 - my weight this morning |
During my long journey of losing 135lbs (61kgs), I spent years without stepping on the scale. I stopped weighing myself after getting frustrated when my weight loss plateau'd at 285lbs (130kgs). It took me about 3 years before I finally decided to weight myself and I was seriously concerned the results would cause me to fall back into a "fast results" oriented routine. The scale read 217lbs (98kgs) and thankfully I did not change a thing from what I was, and still am, doing.
Diet culture, which we generally associate with weight loss, teaches us to directly link your success to the rate of lbs/kgs you are losing. There are many problems with that direct link. First, the human body does not lose weight at a constant rate and you will experience plateaus. You must give your body that time to adjust and know that the weigh will continue to drop on its own time. Second, depending on your lifestyle and activity, you may become healthier and actually gain weight. Muscle is three times more dense than fat, so as you tone up and become fitter, your weight may stay the same or even increase, specially if you start lifting weights and resistance training- but you will be healthier. Another interesting problem with focusing strictly on the scale, is that your body goes through quite drastic weight variations on a daily basis. I conducted an experiment this morning and weighed myself (first time in about 2 months, by the way) soon after I woke up. The weight was a respectable 80.3kg (177lbs), which is generally where my body has leveled off over the last 2 years or so. I then ate my usual breakfast, drank 2 glasses of water, took a shower and weighed myself again - the digits now registered 81.4kg (179lbs), a 1.1kg (2.4lbs) gain in about 45 minutes. The point is, if you are adopting a new active lifestyle, your rate of weight loss will probably be very slow. I estimate that I lost all my weight at a 2-3lb (1-1.5kg) per month ratio. So if I happened to have a "monthly weigh-in" at the wrong side of a denser meal, I would have to deal with the psychological blows of "wasting a month" or "it's not working" or "I have to starve myself". All for no reason.
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| Experiment Data Entry#2 - my weight after breakfast and a shower. Hellllooo Fatso! |
Another possibly dangerous Number Game is "Counting Calories". The problem is not keeping track of what you eat numerically, but keeping a set number for your daily calorie intake based on the 2,000-2500 daily calories guideline is unrealistic and could even slow down your metabolism if you are living a very active lifestyle. Everybody is different, everybody's metabolism is different and everybody's activity level is different, so setting a fixed caloric intake off a chart makes no sense. Not only that, the amount of calories your body needs will change from day to day based on how much activity or recovery your body needs. For me, the key was learning to listen to your body and adjusting your eating to what and how much your body is asking for - it's my old guideline again: never be full, never be hungry.
About 15 years ago, I went from 250lbs to 175lbs in about a year, eating 800 calories a day in one single meal and running about 3 miles daily. Not only was I miserable and hungry all the time, I had no energy as my body was starving itself. The result was ballooning back up to 310lbs as soon as my diet ended. No wonder I am not a fan of number-based result-oriented diets.
But not all numbers are bad for you! A much better Number Game is the "get to know your enemy" game. The goal of the game is to understand how unhealthy some of your favorite treats are so that you can budget their intake - you still get to eat those goodies though, as mentioned in this previous post. My enemy has always been fat, so I started studying my food choices focusing on 2 aspects of the nutrition label - calories and fat, the latter being most important ( sugar is another common enemy you can keep an eye on as well). "Calories" would just give me an idea of how much of the treat I could eat, and "Fat" would tell me if it would be worth eating it at all. You get to know your enemy then by determining the ratio of deliciousness to evil. If something that doesn't taste fantastic turns out to be incredibly bad for me, it became much easier for me to pass on. I would then save those evil points for something more delicious that I truly wanted after the bike ride. All of a sudden, the "hostess mini-donettes" became much easier to resist!
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| Get to know your enemy - I personally focus on calories and fat content. |
Everyone is different and some people need the structure, the encouragement or just the sense of responsibility that a graph/chart and numbers can give. I have a feeling I might be the odd one out here ( not the first time) and that most people actually will need to keep track of their current weight. The key is to find a tracking technique that will enable you to keep your new lifestyle, not only in terms of what you eat, but also how active you are. There are apps out there that not only will keep track of your calorie intake but will also take into account your calorie outtake by keeping track of your activities and exercises (Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by Myfitnesspal.com, for example).
If you do decide to keep track of your weight loss, it is crucial to always remember that weight loss has its up's and down's and plateaus and that is a normal part of being a human being. You must be patient, keep being active and keep eating good food.
As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race.
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