How often should you weigh yourself?
If I were starting out on this weight loss thing for the first time, I’d say never more than once a week.
However, I have a history with scale insanity – brought about by the combination of my natural fear of failure and the stressful weekly ritual of the Weight Watchers weigh-in.
What do I mean by scale insanity?
I mean wearing the lightest clothes I own – but only after the initial weigh-in – then progressing to taking off my watch then my wedding ring.
I mean not eating breakfast and taking my coffee in a travel mug so that I can drink it after stepping on the scale.
I mean seeing that weekly event as something that could make or break my day.
I mean allowing myself to be defined by a number.
That’s not sane.
So the only way I could think of breaking that was to weigh myself every day till it held no power over me.
It works but there are strict parameters:
Weigh only first thing in the morning without clothes. (wedding ring can stay!)
Weigh only once. If your scale doesn’t give the same reading when you weigh yourself 3 times in 3 minutes, get a new scale.
Practice and practice some more the skill of seeing that the scale is just measuring changes in the weight of the composition of your body. It will fluctuate all over the place and does not in any way reflect who you are as a person.
Only another sufferer of scale insanity would think that the above sentence is not crazy.
Please please please only embark on daily weighing if it makes you more sane about your body rather than less. And never ever ever step on the scale in the evening. Really. Just don’t.
If you’d like to be bored to tears by the slow progress of my own weight loss, you can keep tabs on my Daily Weigh page.
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