I hit the 260's, which I should be about, and I am but my weight's been shifting back and forth between 267.8 and 269 all week, which is depressing. Today, my "offical" weigh in day, its at 269, which would be a gain, I believe. I'm thinking of not recording it. I'm drinking lots of water today, avoiding sodium and seeing what it is tomorrow because I've worked out, 5 times this past week. Today is supposed to be a day off but Friday I didn't feel like I did a great workout (instead of one of the DVD's I just walked around the neighborhood for 20-30 minutes) so I'm going to trudge through another workout. My calories for the overall week are in defieciet of my calories burned but the scale isn't moving.
My question: how many of you are flexible about your weigh in days? Do you record regardless if your up or down, even if your sure it could be water retention or something else or will you wait a day to see if the numbers go down?
I don't want to feel like I'm cheating.
Since I weigh in on Mondays...no matter what I record what I weigh Monday morning, good or bad. Last Monday I weighed 283 and this morning I'm 277.5! Soooo it makes the loss for this week even better! If I had waited to record it on Tuesday, I think I was 281.5...then my loss wouldn't be as big. It gives me encouragement!
If you are going to choose a day as your official weigh-in day, then record your weight on that day. Period. Sometimes it WILL go up--this is normal. You'll see that over time, if you are sticking with your program, it will go down.
I have kind of a complicated system, LOL. I have an Excel spreadsheet with several tabs on it. One is the Daily tab, and I weigh and record every day. I have a graph on that page as well, and it helps because I can see that even though there are lots of ups and downs, it is trending sharply down.
Then I have the weekly, "Official" graph. This is where I record Friday's weight, and it's the weight I use to move my ticker. This week, I had to record a GAIN of .6 pounds. Booo! BUT.... I had taken my son to dinner at the local Mongolian grill the night before, so I knew it was probably sodium. And I was right-- today I am down 2.5 pounds from Friday's official weight. But Friday is over, weight recorded, moving on. Like Astigmatistic says, that will just give me a nice big loss to post on NEXT Friday, so it's all good.
We need to look at the long term, the big picture. I'm in this for life, so it ultimately doesn't really matter that I recorded a small, upwards blip this week. I'm heading DOWN overall, and that's what matters!
Once a week. Can't stand any more info that that. I take the number, no matter WHAT it is and record it on my fridgegraph. The trend is what is important. And if it is a gain for no apparent reason, I'll usually have a WHOOSH the next week which makes me feel great. Ya gotta own the number, no matter what it is and put it into perspective...
Once you start playing the "I'll record the lowest number" game, you spend more time obsessing about the number and not the trend. And the question you gotta ask is "why is the NUMBER more important than the TREND"...here's my latest graph, with the good, the bad, and the downright UGLY on it. But notice the trend...
What I can't figure out is the zig zagging I've been going through in the past little while...can't figure it out at all...but it is what it is...
I weigh every day but Sunday is my OFFICIAL weigh day so I count that and use it to tabulate my weekly totals. Sometimes it's up... and that usually means I'll have a rockin weight loss to record the next week
I recorded. I got a pleasent suprise when I went to post my weight on the challenge threads I'm doing on here...I am still down 1.2 pounds. Its occured to me that I thought I gained cause I was going with my weeks lowest number compared to this one. If I just keep on weighing in Sundays it'll keep the trend more accurate.
I thought of something else after my original response to you. Sometimes I *feel* as if I am stuck, haven't lost, etc. But when I go and look at my actual numbers, I really haven't been at this weight for long at all! The first time I saw a 202 (202.8, to be exact) was on August 8. I've had a bunch of ups and downs between then and today, which was 202.0. So even though it feels like FOREVER, I've really only been in this weight neighborhood for 8 days. My scale is old and unreliable (I have to keep stepping on it to get 2 weights that agree), so the truth could be that I am a little heavier or a little lighter. I try not to let these little bits bug me; the real truth is that I am over 40 pounds lighter than I was in January, and I got there by doing the same things that I did this past week--counting calories and exercising.
So we just need to keep doing what we're doing and ignore the little ups and downs.