Dear Diary,
I am infatuated with my scale. I weigh myself every
morning, it's part of my daily routine, I get on it just before I step into
the shower. You ask the reason I do this? Umm well, just because the scale is
right there on the bathroom floor just
beneath the towel rack, alongside the toilet.
It calls out to me and dares me to come on over and get my daily
reading; my daily dreaded number. Yes, yes, I know it's just a number and that
it doesn't mean all that much, but that number does linger in the back of my
brain (behind all the unimportant stuff) and I admit it kind of affects my mood.
So, I guess I have a love/hate relationship with my scale. Some days I love it,
but most days I hate it!
Yours truly,
Scaled-obsessed
Dear Scale-obsessed,
DROP THE NUMBER!
Interestingly enough research shows that the anxiety from
the "number" on the scale often plays a significant role in causing
people to fall of the bandwagon and give up on weight loss and general
healthier lifestyle goals.
The scale is a poor indicator of your progress. Along with
fat, it also measures muscle and water weight. So, if you're working really
hard at the gym to build lean muscle, then chances are good that you have lost
fat, however, this may not reflect on the scale as muscle actually weighs more
than fat. Or if you were rather thirsty and guzzled water just before you stepped
on, your daily number may be higher than it was yesterday when you were
dehydrated. If your scale is not one of the fancy shmancy types that calculates
TBW or total body water, then your scale is weighing your water along with your
fat, muscle etc.
Bottom Line: - Do yourself a favor. Chuck your scale! Put it
out of sight and out of mind. You will feel liberated. It is a poor indicator
of your weight loss goals and overall health, and serves as a source of
stress which is detrimental to our health and well-being (the complete opposite
of what we are trying to accomplish here!).
Yours truly,
Idy Neuman MS, RD, CDN
No comments:
Post a Comment