The Scale (Dun Dun Duh...)

The scale - something that is just an inanimate object - seems to rule so many of our lives. I know what it does to me, and in reading many weight-loss blogs in the past few days, I see that I'm not alone. You all know what I'm talking about...how you can be having a perfectly happy day, then you step on the scale and it doesn't tell you what you want to hear. Or, you are working your diet, staying on track AND exercising, and you step on the scale and you've lost nothing. Or worse yet, gained a pound. Major angst ensues! Why bother dieting if this is the result?! What am I doing wrong?! This diet doesn't work!!!

Now, I have to confess something - I was anorexic in high school (oh how I long for the days when I weighed 83 lbs! No I don't! Yes I do! Yeah, I'm still screwed up...). I weighed myself several times a day, and the scale RULED MY WORLD. Cut to five years later, and I'm on Weight Watchers trying to lose the baby weight after the birth of my first son, and I'm having success, enjoying my weekly weigh-ins...and then I bought a scale for at home. And I started weighing myself in the morning. Every day. And then again in the evening. And if the scale didn't move downward every day, I was depressed. I finally had to put the scale on a shelf in my closet so I wouldn't be so tempted to step on it every day.

Now, many years and many, many diets later, I do not own a scale. And after reading some blogs, I'm glad I don't. The scales today weigh in tenths, and I've read on a lot of blogs how someone was down .2 lbs in a day. Or up .4 lbs. And their moods reflect what the scale said. Come on, people!!! Don't do this to yourself!!! If you know that you are staying true to your diet plan, and are exercising, then the weight will come off - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but it will happen.

Weigh yourself once a week. Don't be a slave to the scale.