The Scale: Friend or Foe?

I think the use of the scale is one of the most debated issues regarding weight loss. Should we even use one at all? And if we do how often? How do I know if I'm losing weight and reaching my goals without obsessing over every little number. It's different for everyone but I do believe you need to check in with a scale at least every couple of weeks.

I know, I know, the scale isn't the only way to assess progress. You want to LOOK good. You want your clothes to start feeling loose. You want people to say, "have you lost weight?" You want to see the infamously unattainable inner-thigh gap (sigh... and ugh). Maybe the way you know you've lost weight is when you can wave goodbye to someone and not have your arm flab flapping all over the place.

Whatever your way of knowing you lost weight is, you still need the scale. We all have our "healthy weight range" regardless of how much muscle we are putting on or how bloated we are from our periods. Yes, I just used the "p" word. If you don't know your target weight range, just ask your doctor. It's really that simple. And the only way to know when you've reached that range is to use a scale.

Okay, so now that we've all agreed that we need to use the scale, the question is: how often?

I think a happy medium is to weigh yourself once a week. If you weigh yourself too often you will honestly drive yourself crazy obsessing over it and when it doesn't go well every single day you're going to want to give up. We all have bad days or weird days where we think we were super strict but somehow gained 0.7 pounds and then we want to cry into a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream because, you know, what's the point anymore? And that's no way to build confidence in ourselves. If you weigh yourself once a week all of your bad, weird, good and great days will even out and give you a solid number of how your week went overall. And if you don't like the number, you can look back on the week and say "hmm well this and this and this probably explains why I'm not happy with the number so I'll change these variables next week." If you wait too long to weigh yourself and you're not happy with your progress, you won't be able to look back and remember the specifics of your weeks and days to figure out what is holding you back from success.

Remember, like everything in life, moderation is key.

xo AJB