Saturday, September 21, 2019

Check your food scale! I've plateaued for months — turns out my scale has been lying to me.

I started my weight loss journey a two years ago. In the first year, lost 35 pounds. Last fall, I fell off the bandwagon and gained about 15 pounds back — and while I'm now at the weight where I was before, I've been struggling to lose any additional weight since. For months, it's seemed like no matter how hard I try, my weight won't budge.

I assumed it must be human error. I got married this year, so maybe it was stress! I injured my back a few months ago, so maybe I was just moving a lot less. Or maybe I miscalculated my TDEE (even though, when I recalculated, it was the same)? Maybe I wasn't being honest with myself about how much I was eating when I went out. Why else wouldn't I be losing weight?

Well, you read the title, so you already know.

For a while, I've been noticing some weird behavior with my scale. If I left food on for more than a few seconds, the number would change a little, adding or subtracting a few grams. If I pressed on the scale at all (say, the pressure from adding peanut butter to bread with a knife), it would change the weight after I let go. (I even posted about these issues here.) But when I replaced the batteries, nothing changed — so I assumed it was something that all scales did. As I mentioned, I got married this year and had to heal from an injury, so I figured my weight was stagnating for other reasons.

But when I weighed a package at home last week, and then saw it weigh 40 grams more at the post office, I decided to order a new scale.

Well, it came today. And wouldn't you know it? My old scale has been off — BY A LOT. Lighter items weigh 10% to 20% less on my old scale than my new one. Heavier items, like meals, can be off by as much as 50%. Video proof.

I almost wanted to cry. I can't believe how much time I've wasted not realizing this was the issue. I first noticed the scale problems above almost a year ago. Why didn't I check sooner? How much farther could I be in my journey if I had had a working scale?

On one hand, I'm frustrated and disappointed this held me back for so long. On the other, I now know why I wasn't losing weight, and it wasn't stress, an injury, or that I "just can't do this". It was as simple as a food scale issue — which means that, now that the issue is fixed, I can make progress again.

TL;DR: My food scale was misreporting my food weight for almost a year. Now that I have a new one, I hope I can start losing weight again!

submitted by /u/thefearlessforce
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