How I stopped being emotionally affected by the number on the scale

BIG DISCLAIMER: I'm just sharing my own experience. I'm in no way saying that everyone should do this, or even needs to do this. There are many other metrics that can be used to track weight loss progess, and scale weight is just one of them. In no way, does it give the complete picture. If you feel that weighing yourself negatively affects your mental health, please skip this post.

Context: I've been on a couple weight loss "journeys" over the past decade, and in each of those I was anxious about stepping on the scale and seeing that number.

What I did -

1. Weigh myself once daily (first thing in the morning after using the loo)
2. Track my weight using HappyScale (alternatives are LibraScale for Android, or just using graphs on a spreadsheet)

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Why this worked for me -

1. Weigh myself once daily (first thing in the morning after using the loo) - the first 2-3 weeks of doing this, I would feel anxiety about stepping on the scale. I had to emotionally reassure myself that the weight is just a number. But after a month or so of doing this, patterns started emerging. If I had had fried food the previous day, I would see a spike in my weight. If I had eaten later than usual the previous day, I would see a spike. If I was consipated, I would see a spike. This is the mental change that happened - when I checked my weight everyday, if it had jumped by 1kg (2 lbs) in the span of one day, I understood that there was no way I gained 1kg in a day. I mean we always read/hear about this on social media, but watching it happen to me reaaally cemented it for me. And most times, if I ate according to plan that day, next day I would again see a drop of ~1kg (2 lbs).All of this just helped me understand on a deeper level that the weight is just a metric, and a pretty noisy one at that. But you can reduce the noise if you track it over time. Which brings me to point 2.
2. Track my weight using HappyScale - this app calculates a moving average of your weight, along with other useful stats like current rate of weight loss, trends over the week/month/year. Again, seeing the pretty trend graphs reduced the importance of my weight that day - instead bringing my attention to longer term trends.
   

I plan to keep using this method even after reaching maintenance phase as I find the long term trends (monthy or more), a good indicator of my overall energy balance.

I hope this helps someone!

EDIT: fixed formatting

submitted by /u/Left_Opportunity9622
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