Everyday Systems

So yesterday was my first day on this diet.. I need to lose about 20 lbs. This diet is awfully simple and I'm a bit worried about it so I need to monitor the scale everyday just for the plain fear of it. Once I see I'm not gaining weight I will slowly begin to take my eyes from the scale but for now I'm watching very closely...nervously... and anxiously.

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Welcome Randi!

keep in mind it's perfectly normal for your weight to skip around a lot (just click and look at my progress chart below). So, if you intend to keep a close eye on your weight, you might want to make an excell chart too in order to track your average weight.

good luck and good habits!

Rose... excellent excel sheet...very motivating.. how many times a month do you weigh yourself?

Bienvenu Randi! Take things one meal at a time, it takes time to change habits. God Bless you with success.

Randi: I usually weigh myself every N-day after breakfast. As you can see it doesn't prevent my weight from jumping around. Also I usually weigh more on Mondays than on Fridays because of the weekend indulgences. That's why the moving average line is interesting.

Hi Randi,

I'm new too - welcome!

This new way of eating is very simple, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't work...I think the diet industry has conditioned dieters to thinking everything has to be hard, when in truth, in most cases, losing weight is a very simple concept: eat less, move more. EVERYONE that I know who's lost weight (and kept it off - important distinction) did it through moderation and this concept.

Don't stress too much - I know when I do, my body seems to hang on to every pound. Remember, most of this battle is in your head. If you are convinced that something is so simple it won't work, that's the result you're likely to get. Try to approach this with an open mind, and let yourself relax. I know for me, having been in the consumer dieting circus for over ten years now, I *need* the opportunity to relax.

Have you bought the book? There's a ton of info on the homepage, but I've heard a lot of the veterans say the book is invaluable. Maybe reading further on the subject would help?

Best of luck!

Randi,

WELCOME!

weighing everyday is ok ... Reinhard calls it "scientific weighing"! I think he talked about it on the No Scales thread as an option to not weighing at all,

Blueskighs

Welcome!

There's been a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of weighing on this board, and what precisely is the best way to do it, if at all.

The issue is, sustainable weight loss like you'll experience on no-s tends to be very slow -- half a pound a week is a good, rough approximation. That's slow enough that it's going to be difficult to see on a scale: your weekly loss is likely to be less than your daily random fluctuations. This can be frustrating and knock you off course.

There seem to be two good (and very different) solutions to dealing with this problem: either check the scale daily and track the moving average in excel or some other program, or have faith that moderate behavior will translate into results and check the scale rarely if at all. What you don't want to do is check sporadically and let individual, outlier measurements throw you into a funk -- because you are going to see some pretty absurd, meaningless numbers if you look often enough.

Best of luck, whatever you decide!

Reinhard

Randi,

My advice would be to worry more about the habit-establishment at the beginning and less about your weight. There have been several people on the board who actually gained at first, then leveled off and lost.

When you first start, it's easy to go a little overboard with the new-found freedom... but that almost always corrects itself naturally over time.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "don't stress too much."

Welcome and good luck!