14 July 2010

The story of a scale

Like most people who have battled with their weight, I have a love/hate relationship with my scale.  I've had one most of my adult life.  Even in my younger days when I really didn't have a weight problem I always had a scale in my bathroom.  Then 20 some odd years ago I started Weight Watchers for the first time.  I kind of bought into the scale kool-aid they were selling, that having a scale at home is not a good idea, you should only weigh in once a week and not every day...yadda...yadda.... (yes, I'm watching Seinfeld). So I threw my scale out.  It was liberating.  I felt free and unfettered. I also stopped going to weight watchers and ended up gaining 75 lbs.  Not. Good.

Fast forward 10 years or so and I am really struggling with my weight.  I break down and buy a scale.  I buy one of those new, fancy bodyfat calculator scales - I paid a freaking fortune too. I started weighing myself and gradually started to get my weight under control.  After a little while I ended up going back to WW again.  I kept my home scale but didn't use it as much.  Then, when  I hit a plateau, I rediscovered my scale.  I found that by weighing myself every morning I really got a good look at my weight fluctuations.  I found that I was able to predict when my weight would go up because of something I ate.  I found I could see exactly how much I gained just before my period.  It really opened my eyes and made weight loss simple, well, okay not simple, but more understandable.  For years I weighed myself every morning.  I had a real handle on my weight and everything the affected it.  Then slowly I stopped doing it.  Well, actually I thought my scale had died.  Turns out the batteries I used to replace the dead ones were also dead.  Anyway, I started to get out of the habit of weighing.  Then, slowly, the weight started to creep up.  The more it crept upwards the less I would weigh, I didn't need to look at my failure every morning.  Then around mid-June I saw the highest number on the scale I had seen in years.  I freaked.  Shortly after that my scale died completely.  I then started thinking that I would go without a scale. That I would try to focus on intuitive or mindful eating and leave the scale alone for a while.  Well, the other day I broke down and bought a new one.  It came today.  It is pretty slick looking, it calculates fat%, BMI, muscle mass, water mass, everything.  It's pretty cool.  So I got it, put a battery in and stepped on it.  OMG!!!! I saw an even larger number.  Clearly not weighing does not work for me.  So starting tomorrow I'm back to weighing every morning and there's some other stuff too, but this post is about a scale. 

No comments:

Another week down

 Well the first week back from spring break wasn't bad at all. I was looking forward to the weekend though, so I'm very glad it'...