Weighing In
Let’s talk about the scale. Most people either hate it and avoid it or are obsessed with it. Or are obsessed with hating it! While weight loss most definitely helps with improving one’s health, over use of the scale is always detrimental. If you’re a person who can get on it here and there just to keep an eye on things, fine. But if you’re getting on there more than once a day (and some would say more than once a week), you may need to take a real break from it to break that habit.
I once weighed myself on 3 different scales in one day and got 3 different numbers, all within 4 pounds of each other. Then, over the course of a few days, I weighed myself twice a day in a couple different gyms and at home, and it again varied by as much as 4 pounds.
Scales vary, human bodies vary, and women’s bodies vary the most. We have constant fluid level changes that are a big culprit, but other things “weigh in” as well such as your last bowel movement, your last meal, the content of that meal, how much water you’ve had, where you are in your monthly cycle, if you just worked out or not….
I stopped weighing clients a few years ago after during monthly weigh-ins I had a couple different women burst into tears on the scale. It made me stop and think, and I decided that the last thing I wanted to do was to make women (and men) feel badly about their bodies. Seeing the number on the scale can cause a lot of stress which in turn can trigger the release of stress hormones that interfere with the body’s ability to to function properly and burn calories efficiently. This in turn can actually cause a person to gain weight over time. Now I weigh clients if they want to track it with me, but we focus more on the many other “personal measures of success”.
