Stepping Away From The Scale.

You may or may not have noticed that I haven't been tracking my weight in quite a few weeks. As much as I wish I haven't been weighing myself, I have been. Obsessively, in fact. I weighed myself every morning from last Thursday to this morning. I like what the scale is saying, but I still know I shouldn't be weighing myself every day.

I have a problem with the scale, it's not always my friend. I have read so many blog posts lately about the scale, and I wish I could put the scale away once and for all. However, I do have more weight to loose and I never measured my body, I don't think I would like checking progress that way. Maybe once I loose all my weight and just want to tone up, that would be an ideal way to check progress, but not quite yet.

No, the scale does not accurately tell you what your body looks like, and it is not a measure of how fit or healthy you are. Right now, at about 155 pounds, I might look completely different than someone else at the same weight. Even another woman the same height as me might look completely different. But yet we put so much into the scale and what it reads.

When we move, I think I'm going have Mr. Skinny hide my scale. This has worked in the past to break me of my obsessiveness. I need to focus on how my body feels instead of how the scale tells me to feel. When I gain, even if it's a tiny gain, I feel like a failure, I quickly judge myself on my eating and exercising habits of the past days or the past week, even if it is a fluke. I'm a woman, I have hormonal changes, and they affect what the scale tells me.

For right now, I need to continue weighing myself. Every day is not a good idea, and I realize that, even though I pull the scale out daily to check and make sure I'm on the right track. Weekly worked while I was on Weight Watchers, that's what they recommended and that's what I did, no problem. It was the day you got all new points, if you were in the red, it was forgiven, a brand new day. Now, however, as I'm just tracking calories, there are no "saving points" for a big event. You can exercise that day to have extra calories to eat, but you can't hoard points. For right now, that works for me.

Since I don't have that once a week ritual anymore, I think I'm going to switch to bi-weekly weigh ins, permanently. Or at least until I get to "goal weight" whatever that number may be. I know what's considered healthy for my height, but I don't think that's considered healthy for my body type, so we'll play it by ear and see how it goes. I don't have to worry about it for at least 15 more pounds, and that's if I ever get out of my rut of these stubborn 5 pounds I've been playing with for months. Alas! I did break through on one of my days of weighing myself daily. I don't know if it will stick around, and I'll weight until next Friday to see.

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Do you weigh yourself?
If so, how often and are you planning on "stepping away from the scale"?
If not, when did you stop?