Everyday Systems

I am making a goal of staying off the scale until my birthday, June 20. Can I do it, yes. I find the more I obsess and weigh, the less the scale moves, and the more I feel like I am on a diet. I will focus on following the rules. And walking the dog, as that is the exercise of choice. Beyond that no weighing until June. Two months of freedom. And if in two months all I have done is maintain, I will be ecstatic. If I lose a pound, I will be through the roof. If I gain, I will run to Jenny Craig, just kidding. I will choke it up to water weight=). But I get a sneaky suspicion that I won't gain. A watched pot never boils and a watched scale never drops, it just makes you obsess, fail, binge, cry, etc.

Oh my - this is so true. I've been doing the No S for only a week and it's been very eye opening in terms of emotional triggers. I started working out at the gym and getting very active in the last 3 weeks. I jump on the scale every chance I get and become more and more upset each time. From here on out I plan to pretend that scales don't exist!

Yeah, I'm kind of over the scale, too, for now.

Cheeks, I'm still kind of giggling about "Cake Week" from the other thread. It's brilliant. Did it work? People brought you cake all week?

I plan to weight in one year. I will judge my successes by # of Days on Habit & sizes lost. I also plan to reward myself for # of Days on Habit. I think my first reward will be after 30 Days on Habit--a flat panel computer monitor for my home.

I put my scale away this morning. I used to be a daily (sometimes multiple times) weigher. NO MORE! I'm aiming for once a month. ok, maybe once a week.

I too am putting away my scale. NO more will I be a slave to the scale. Why do we let this stupid little thing control our mood and emotions. I feel like the nos plan is going to free me from all the crazy diets I have been on in my life over and over again. Thanks everyone!!

milczar wrote:I am making a goal of staying off the scale until my birthday, June 20. Can I do it, yes. I find the more I obsess and weigh, the less the scale moves, and the more I feel like I am on a diet. I will focus on following the rules. And walking the dog, as that is the exercise of choice. Beyond that no weighing until June. Two months of freedom. And if in two months all I have done is maintain, I will be ecstatic. If I lose a pound, I will be through the roof. If I gain, I will run to Jenny Craig, just kidding. I will choke it up to water weight=). But I get a sneaky suspicion that I won't gain. A watched pot never boils and a watched scale never drops, it just makes you obsess, fail, binge, cry, etc.

I think that is a great idea! Oh, by the way, June 20th is also my youngest daughter's birthday. Happy early birthday! You are giving yourself an awesome gift by starting this plan.

I'm with all of you. Even every two weeks is frustrating so I am dumping the scales as well. I have been No s-ing for 6 weeks and probably lost 4-5 lbs but the fluctuations don't always show steady progress....I'll pull them back out in May or June. The thing is, there is no magic cure to make the weight disappear fast enough....but after a lifetime of dieting this is the best way I see to manage my life and eating habits and still lose some weight without losing my mind.

Great idea! Although I haven't been on mine in awhile anyway, mostly out of fear

Maybe I'll weigh only at the beginning of each season. Days on habit are a far better barometer of succcess, after all!

Bah, scales. I don't have one on campus, but there's a fancy digital one (accurate to within .1 of a pound!!!) right next to the shower at home. So I'd play a game.

Wake up. Weigh yourself as the shower is warming up. Shower. Dry off. Weigh yourself again. If you're anything like me, your weight will have fluctuated by about 4 pounds in less than 10 min, with no food ingested and the same level of clothing.

Conclusion: scales are crap. Was fun to see it in action, however. Over the course of my two weeks at home, my weight on that same scale at the same time of day varied by around 15 pounds.

Finnegar - I've moved my scale all around my apartment and my weight is different in each room. I tend to weigh less on the hard woods, but gain 3 pounds on ceramic tile.

I have also ditched the scales (a major thing for me who has my daily weight tracked on excel going back about 10 years!) and the freedom and the reduction in brain 'chatter' is amazing.

I will weigh once a month currently and in time reduce to nothing - who cares what I weigh as long as I feel comfortable and look better in my clothes.

A watched scale can do worse than not drop.

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=24

I'd suggest either:

1. forget the scale altogether (best for serious scale phobias). Focus on behavior and how your clothes fit.

2. measure just once a month, and then take a few measurements over a few days. (minimizes depressing news, while still averaging out anomalies a bit)

3. measure regularly and plot the moving average in excel. Most accurate and if you focus on the moving average rather than individual reads, should keep you from getting too bipolar about it. Rose posted a great image of her chart, but I can't find it just now. Downside is it takes work to track (and "brain chatter" ) and an individual outlier may cause you to lose your scientific composure even though you ought to know better.

Reinhard

Reinhard,

I use FitDay. It has all those cute little report modules and graphs, plus it keeps my nutrition in check.

I only weigh myself 5 days a week at the gym because I don't own a scale. I'm also trying to chart water gains because I'm menopausal and hypothyroid, both of which are hell for water gain.

f

Reinhard ---

Just read the transcript about weighing yourself and you are SO right about how it's even a bad thing to know you've LOST weight. Whenever I get to a good weight of 145 or 6, I "celebrate" and seem to go lax on whatever it is I'm doing to get to a healthy weight and BOOM, the next week I'm back where I started. This is a combination of me being on diets I can't stick to or try to make up myself and me eating badly when the pounds drop.

Everytime I think I've lost weight, I weigh myself and I'm always right, it's less. Maybe we should all just trust ourselves when we feel like we weigh less or more and skip the scale for the most part. Once a month sounds good to me.

Because I'm hoping to get pregnant again in the coming months I ditched my scale. My midwife measures appropriate weight gain not by the mother's weight, but by how the baby is growing. If I focus on eating well and being physically active the rest will fall into place naturally. So I gave my scale to my mother in law. That was 2 months ago. I don't miss it.

lmt2pt wrote:Because I'm hoping to get pregnant again in the coming months I ditched my scale. My midwife measures appropriate weight gain not by the mother's weight, but by how the baby is growing. If I focus on eating well and being physically active the rest will fall into place naturally. So I gave my scale to my mother in law. That was 2 months ago. I don't miss it.

Heather, this is totally off the main subject of this thread, but best wishes to you on your baby-making venture in the upcoming months. It is great to hear that you are starting to take care of yourself beforehand, because the good habits you begin today will easily carry over into your pregnancy. May you be blessed soon!

I weigh every day and plot it as a moving average in Excel because, well...

I'm a nerd and this satisfies my love of measuring without getting out of control about it in unhelpful ways.

I tend to weigh less on the hard woods, but gain 3 pounds on ceramic tile.

lola628,

that is so funny !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Blueskighs