I was an athlete in college and in fairly decent shape through my 20s. In my thirties I developed a fairly nasty alcohol addiction and the last five years I added depression on top of it. I struggled with my weight for all of my thirties. I don’t want to live the next decade of my life like that. I’m likely as heavy as I have ever been (or close to it) though I’m an avid weightlifter and put on a lot of muscle the last 3 or so years. So I think I weigh similar to what I did when I was 35 but look somewhat better in the mirror. Still chubby/fat though.
I’m one of those people who can’t make any progress in weight loss unless I weigh myself. However I hated doing so. It gives me a lot of anxiety and I find it very frustrating and demotivating. First I have to weigh myself the first time which if I haven’t done for months (or maybe a year sometimes) is going to be a huge depressing number. ….I actually cheated this time using an old trick to keep the number slightly unknown, I add that later. I don’t know exactly what I weigh, but I can see the difference from week to week and that is all that matters to me now.
My problem with the scale is the fact that my target weight loss goal (let’s say 2 lbs a week) is less then the weekly, or daily “noise” of normal weight fluctuations of water weight. On any given morning my weight can fluctuate +/- 2.5 lbs based on when I ate last, what I ate, the salt content, the water content, when I went to the bathroom last, how much water I might have drunk during the night (I keep water bottles by my bed). If I were to weigh myself every Wednesday, I might have have actually lost 2lbs of body mass but the scale says I gained 0.5lbs. That’s crushing. Or maybe it goes the other way and says I lost 5lbs! That’s exciting, but though deep down I know it isn’t really real, it still makes me take my foot of the gas a bit or allow myself an extra cheat day.
The real issue is the anxiety over trying to recreate the same conditions week to week so I can see the actual progress. If for instance one Tuesday I didn’t eat after 6pm (not very common because I don’t sleep well if I’m at all hungry) and didn’t drink anything, I might get some great number Wednesday morning. But the following Tuesday I became obsessed with recreating this same food pattern, because I know doing anything else will likely shoot my number way up no matter what I might have lost, and that kills my morale. And once I’m anxious about it, now I’m really going to struggle sleeping, fretting all night about that weigh in. Maybe I break down and eat something. Then I refuse to weigh myself and decide to wait a day. Then it becomes two days. Then I just forgot. Now I’m back to not weighing myself. And in short time will be back to not making any progress.
But the last few weeks I’ve come up with a solution to my troubles. Instead of weighing myself once a week, I weigh myself every day. Now that number is guaranteed to jump all over the place, but I don’t consider that my weight. Instead I calculate a running average of the last 7 days and I consider that my weight. I have been recording my progress daily in a spreadsheet. I wear a fitbit and use it’s results for daily calories expenditure. [I understand there is some question of accuracy with that but so far it has given me results that correlate well with my progress and other calculators I have tried or what gym cardio equipment estimate]. I pretty religiously record my food calories with MyFitnessPal. I calculate the calorie in vs calorie out and keep a running sum and have compared that daily to my 7-day running average weight. It’s been two weeks so far, and since about day 3 after just a few measurements to start averaging the average weight has never been off by more than 0.5lbs then my calculated weight from my CICO.
It’s really changed everything. I’m not afraid of the scale. Sure it helps that I’m tracking my CICO closely, so maybe I know I had a 1000 calorie deficit the day before, if the scale says I weigh more that’s something else. But scale says I’m 1.5lb heavier? We’ll see about that. Put it into the spreadsheet and the 7-day average declined by 0.4lb. Right on track. All and all it’s given me a lot of confidence and motivation. After years of struggling I really feel this is the path that’s finally going to get me to my goals.
Now I just need to reign in my drinking so I can keep that calorie intake at target levels.
Appendix: For context in those weight loss numbers, I’m a regular gym goer and have decentish cardiovascular health and I’m pretty strong. I do cardio everyday, and 4 times a week go back to the gym in the evening to lift weight (3 times) or do an extra cardio session (once). I’d be in great shape if I didn’t drink all that back in the course of a few hours being an absolute boozehound [not to mention the junk food I like to eat when I get drunk].
The reason I don’t know my exact weight is because I couldn’t bring myself to see the real number so I grabbed a backpack and threw in a few heavy textbooks. I wear the backpack every time I weigh myself, obscuring my real weight. It’s silly and a bit tedious but it works for me. I’ve lifted enough weights to know it is likely in the 20-25 lbs range, but I can’t be sure and I purposely try not to think about it. If (no I mean when!) I lose a substantial enough amount of weight I’ll take it off and retroactively scale all my old measurements.
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