I don't weigh myself. I didn't when I gained all my weight over the last decade and I haven't on the way down, either. I get weighed when I get my body composition measured at the clinic several times a year but it's not something I'm concerned with at home.
I have read mention of several recent studies that say weighing yourself at least once a week is good for helping you lose weight or maintain weight loss. So why do I not weigh myself and what benefits might not weighing myself have?
For me, it's about learning a new lifestyle and retraining myelf. When I weigh myself and see poor results, I try harder to lose weight. But those efforts aren't lifestyle-changing because they're always temporary. I'm trying to learn what my body needs and what it doesn't. I'm gauging my unhelpful emotional responses to eating and episodes of over-eating as well.
Weighing in is distracting to the learning I'm trying to do about my physical self. Whatever I do to improve my health, I have to keep it up for the rest of my life. They say you have to do what you do to lose weight to maintain your weight loss because of the physiological differences a formerly-obese body has. The body will work against itself to try to revert to its highest weight.
Yet I know that if I did weigh myself, I wouldn't get off-track as much and I would have better, faster results. I'm getting impatient, trying to reach certain goals of having a smaller, more mobile body and I'm seriously considering ending my embargo of standing on a scale.
The last time I lost weight I was using the scale every day. A day that I didn't go down a half pound (or went up) was a bad day. Positive results equaled a positive day. Bad results made me eat even less that day and exercise a little more, when it was possible. I'm not sure I want that sort of life again, especially since my previous efforts were a colossal failure after I yo-yoed back up into an even bigger obese person than I was before.
Anything I did in the past with temporary success, I'm skeptical of now.
I'm overwhelmed by the number and complexity of things that cause me to eat poorly. Many of these habits are hard to change. They're ingrained in me from decades of practice. It'll take many years with lots of failures along the way to change them and relearn new behaviors.
I truly do have eating problems. They're part of my psyche and physiology. Fad diets and gimmicks won't change them. If anything will it will be years of sheer determination that alter my ingrained behaviors. That and the choice to be a lifelong athlete to make up for the way a formerly-obese body works against itself.
It's bloody hard but it may be the only choice I have. Failure would result in a poor quality of life, many health issues and a premature death.
