I weigh every morning. I’m so susceptible to water retention that weighing weeklly just doesn’t work for me. I need to know if the 2 lb gain is actually a gain that’s crept on all week, or is just some weird fluctuation that will be gone tomorrow.

This morning, I weighed 14s9.2. That’s 1.6 lbs off since yesterday! I must be dumping water. I’m not working out enough to burn that kind of fat. I just hope it’s not muscle that’s going. I’ve lost enough already. We’ll see tomorrow whether it’s come back or not!

Why do I weigh myself every day? Well, a few years ago, I tried weight watchers to ditch the post-quitting-smoking weight. On the 3rd week or so, I set off for my meeting, confident of a loss as I’d been good all week, exercised, stayed on plan, the whole deal. I got on the scale and saw the dreaded figures: 2 lb gain! You could have hit me in the face with a brick and I would not have felt more stunned. I didn’t really concentrate on the meeting as all I could think about was how it could have happened.

I got home, weighed myself again and, sure enough, the 2 lbs was still there. I felt like giving up and eating everything in the fridge, but I didn’t. I held my resolve and moved on.

The next morning, I weighed myself again and somehow, I’d magically lost 6 lbs! I weighed myself again when I got home and had only had an extra 2 lbs. So, I had, in fact LOST 2 lbs that week, but timing and bad luck meant I stood on the scale when I was carrying extra water. So, I resolved to weigh myself daily, twice a day, for a month, to learn more about how my body changes day to day. I also weighed myself before my official weigh in, to ensure I never got caught on the hop like that again.

Two weeks later, I’d watched the weight gradually come off all week, with a few skips and blips, got to weigh in day and, there it was, a 4lb gain again. I knew that couldn’t be fat, it just doesn’t work that way, so I went to the weigh in, knowing I’d have a gain, but that it wasn’t real and it would likely be gone by morning.

I got to the meeting, weighed in, saw the “2lb gain” and the leader asked what I’d done wrong, etc etc. I said that it wasn’t a real gain as I weighed myself everyday and this was a 4 lb “blip”. She looked at me in horror, told me I MUSN’T weigh myself everyday due to weight fluctuations and how demoralizing it could be. I tried to counter by explaining that that is the whole reason in favour of weighing daily. I asked her, if I didn’t weigh myself every day, I would have arrived there, seen the 2 lb gain, and been demoralized after all my hard work, not knowing that it was just water and would be gone tomorrow or the day after and I’d actually lost weight that week.

She stuck to her guns, completely incapable of seeing my argument. I can’t help thinking they toe that party line because, if we weighed ourselves at home, why would we need to pay someone else to weigh us?

So, I stopped going and weigh myself at home and lose the weight a healthier way (for me, no franken-food substitutes just because they’re lower in points. Fat free yoghurt or 1 cal cooking spray? No thanks!), losing another 10 lbs at home on my own, weighing myself every day.
If you’re going to be a slave to the numbers, then at least ensure you’re looking at the RIGHT numbers and better understand how they work. If you can live with just seeing progress in the mirror or on the tape measure, then I take my hat off to you! Truly! I wish I had that kind of patience. Sadly, I don’t, and the scale, with this much weight to lose, is still my tool of choice in daily motivation. I won’t set myself up to fail by leaving it all up to chance.