Stay Off the Scale

Saw this on Yahoo and thought it was interesting. What do you all think?

I tend to agree.  The number on a scale is the LEAST important number if what you’re doing is trying to gauge your fitness.  Better numbers to focus on are things like your resting heart rate, your blood pressure, your blood lipid levels, how long you can go doing the Long Slow Burn, how much weight you can lift.  Improving those numbers really does reflect improved health and fitness.  If you’re moving consistently and eating a moderate diet, your body’s weight will come down to where it needs to be on its own timetable.

But that being said, I think it depends on how insane the numbers on that infernal little contraption make you.  If you have given your power to decide how you will feel to the scale, it’s probably a really good idea to toss it and find other ways to gauge your progress.  If, on the other hand, the number on the scale is just another piece of information and it isn’t laden with all sorts of harsh self-judgment, I say hop on the scale to your heart’s content!

I’m a fan of watching the scale just to see where I am.  As long as you remember that it’s just one of many numbers that can be used to gauge your progress and that many factors impact your weight on a given day.

I’ll jump in a little late to this conversation.

I’ve had experiences on both sides.  When I actually lost all my weight (about 25 pounds) in the spring of 2006, I didn’t own a scale.  I only got to weigh myself once every 6 weeks or so when I came home to visit my parents, and it was a huge ego boost to step on and see that I’d lost 10-12 pounds.  That wasn’t to say I wasn’t monitoring: I was measuring by belt notches, fitness level, and the ultimate test: looking at myself in the mirror.  At the time, it worked very well for me.

Since I’ve come home, I’m a fan of weighing myself every day or two.  I’m now in maintenance mode, which means I don’t care if the numbers stay absolutely stable, but I *do* care if they start creeping up.  So long as I remember that my body’s weight tends to fluctuate within a 3-pound range (at the moment, it’s about 111-113), I don’t care where it falls within that range.  I find that using the scale allows me to nip any problems in the bud before they become big deals.  I’m *still* using all those other methods of measurement, but I find the scale very useful.

So I suppose, if someone were to mimic my method, it would go something like this: do everything right while you’re losing weight, and make sure you’re tracking *somehow* (even if it’s not the scale).  Once you get where you want to be, step on the scale to make sure you maintain what you’ve already achieved.

Cheers,
Julie