Chicks in Control Overeating? Binging? Share uplifting support and gain control!

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Old 04-01-2014, 08:34 PM   #1  
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Default For those that are trying to lose the diet mentality,how often do you weigh yourself?

Hi,


I have a lot of weight to lose, I will say that upfront. But what I am working on at the moment is the OA program and tackling my binge and compulsive overeating. The weight should straighten out then if I succeed in this.
But Ill admit I am having trouble and sometimes the scale pisses me off. for the first two weeks I didnt think of the scale but lately ive weighed myself too often and there's been no movement. Considering all the food and binges not eaten during this time I was hoping for more weight to come off. It seems to be around the exact same number for a week. This is also dangerous so I will have to stop getting on scale.

How often do you guys weigh yourself, once every two weeks? once a month?
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Old 04-01-2014, 10:57 PM   #2  
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Hi,


I have a lot of weight to lose, I will say that upfront. But what I am working on at the moment is the OA program and tackling my binge and compulsive overeating. The weight should straighten out then if I succeed in this.
But Ill admit I am having trouble and sometimes the scale pisses me off. for the first two weeks I didnt think of the scale but lately ive weighed myself too often and there's been no movement. Considering all the food and binges not eaten during this time I was hoping for more weight to come off. It seems to be around the exact same number for a week. This is also dangerous so I will have to stop getting on scale.

How often do you guys weigh yourself, once every two weeks? once a month?
Never.

I stopped weighing myself quite some time ago. The reasons are:

a) I'm not dieting, and I'm not concerned with weight loss, so it's pointless for me to weigh.

b) I can generally tell by how I feel & how my body feels if I'm getting larger or smaller. The way my clothes fit tell me more than a scale ever did.

c) When I've used the scale as a measure of "success" when dieting in the past, I always obsessed over the numbers. I don't EVER want to go there again.

This is in no way a criticism of those who use the scale. I only answered because you asked.

Your mileage may vary.
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Old 04-02-2014, 12:05 AM   #3  
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I have a lot of weight to lose, too, and I step on the scale once a week. I've been thinking about doing it once monthly, though. The problem is that weight is not a measurement of how much fat you've gained or lost. There are a whole slew of factors that influence it. I know for myself I itch to weigh when I feel like I've been doing well. I've been hungry or denying myself. I get the scale out not to track my progress but to affirm the things that I have done. This is the problem- when I get on the scale and it hasn't moved or it's gone up then I feel TERRIBLE. All of that effort I put in derails and becomes "not enough" because of that number.

Last edited by Locke; 04-02-2014 at 12:05 AM.
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Old 04-02-2014, 12:39 AM   #4  
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I agree Locke. Honestly when I am hungry most of the day (i guess body adjusting to less food, im not really sure) and see the scale didnt move I want to cry and eat. I just get angry and think f it whats the point. I do want to keep some track though because if it doesnt go down at all then I am doing something very wrong.

I am thinking maybe twice a month might work ok.
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Old 04-02-2014, 08:43 AM   #5  
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I used to weigh on a rigid schedule. Monday mornings were like exam day. Weigh myself first thing and then write it down. Thursday mornings were unofficial, I'd weigh myself but not write it down. It's a bizarre little ritual.

Now I've given up the Thursday morning unofficial readings. I still weigh myself most Mondays but not always! So I'm getting better at not giving too much important to the scale. It's a hard break to make I won't lie. I feel oddly attached to my weight journal. I can look back to any Monday in the past several years and tell you exactly what I weighed. So for example I know that the last time I wore a particular dress I wore it for a friend's wedding in June. Now I go back to my June log and see what I weighed that month... and now I know whether or not I can still fit into that dress lol. Gosh that is bizarre isn't it lol.
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Old 04-02-2014, 09:33 AM   #6  
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For me it varies.....I've had times where the scale was absolutely a trigger and I stopped weighing for long periods of time. I even tried a scale that doesn't give you a number! Right now because I am in a better frame of mind I am weighing once a week officially and occasionally in between. When I am making good progress, not bingeing as much, I tend to weigh myself more because I am encouraged by my progress. When I know my eating is out of control I tend to stop weighing because the number does not motivate me to change, rather to continue self sabotaging (makes no sense, I know). Right now I do consider myself to be "dieting" in the sense that I am overweight and trying to lose weight but the changes I am currently making with my eating are the result of my blood sugar values worsening and therefore, I like to think of them as permanent changes, not a temporary "diet".

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Old 04-02-2014, 10:06 AM   #7  
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I agree Locke. Honestly when I am hungry most of the day (i guess body adjusting to less food, im not really sure) and see the scale didnt move I want to cry and eat. I just get angry and think f it whats the point.
Boy, I remember those days! I have such sympathy for you.

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I am thinking maybe twice a month might work ok.
I'm no expert, believe me, but I will tell you my previous experience with the scale.

When I was still using it, I rarely weighed more often than every two weeks. More often than not, once a month. Monthly seemed to work best for me, because if I was "staying on plan" (boy, I hate that phrase) I was pretty much guaranteed that I'd see a nice loss. It eliminated those inevitable ups and downs that can be so frustrating if you weigh too often.
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Old 04-02-2014, 06:52 PM   #8  
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I'm obsessive and weigh everyday lol. Once a week is fine, or fortnightly. It's up to you, I think.
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Old 04-02-2014, 06:57 PM   #9  
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There is a lot of controversy around how much you should weigh. Jon Gabriel recommends not weighing at all, especially if you use the scale as a reason to beat yourself up. Lyn-Genet, in The Plan, says to weigh every day with a digital scale, because the weight loss or gain is an indicator of inflammation. While I was training myself to release the diet mindset, I did not step on the scale for several weeks. Now I weigh daily. The daily fluctuations tell me which foods are inflammatory for my body. Since each one of us is different, both physically and emotionally, we each have to decide what is best for ourselves.
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Old 04-02-2014, 10:04 PM   #10  
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An alternative that some people use is to weigh once/day with the goal of gaining emotional distance from the number, almost like a process of desensitization. Up, down, it's just a number to record. The trend over a month or longer is what counts. So any given day is "just information." I do this with varying success. If I eat way more than planned to, I avoid weighing for a few days, but eventually get back to it.

Last edited by mars735; 04-02-2014 at 10:07 PM.
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Old 04-15-2014, 10:32 PM   #11  
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Pretty much every day..
I try not to do it and fail every time.
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Old 04-15-2014, 11:07 PM   #12  
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At least once a day, and whenever else I feel like it. I don't think losing the diet mentality has anything to do with whether or not, or how you use a scale.

Weighing whenever I was tempted to, actually helped me lose the diet mentality and the punishment aspect of weightloss.


The less often I weigh, the more I obsess over how every bite might affect the scale. Instead I decided to treat and view the scale/weighing like other emotionally neutral tools/activities.

When I treat it like checking my teeth in the mirror after lunch, to see if I need to floss the spinache out of my teeth, doing it once a day, or even twenty, is only obsessive and harmful if I allow it to be.

I've decided to treat my weight like my hair length. I get to decide when and if I need to change it (grow my hair longer, or cut it shorter), and I don't ever have to feel bad about myself because my hair is shorter or longer than I'd like.

Seeing the number on thexscale doesn't have to be an emotional experience whether you do so once a year or thirty times a day.

Now that I weigh whenever I'm curious, I think about the scale a lot less than when I tried to avoid or limit my use of the scale.

Even when I first decided to do this, when I was weighing myself every time I ate, drank, or used the bathroom, I was still thinking about my weight and the scale a lot less than before.

The number on the scale really isn't important to me, but the changes are. If I'm suddenly up 5 lbs that can mean I'm retaining water. During some times a year that can mean swollen ankles and wrists and it can aggravate my arthritis. Seeing the weight gain sooner rather than later, and drinking extra fluids to flush the weight gain prevents the blood pressure and arthritis aggravation.

Checking my weight daily is no different than brushing my teeth, monitoring my blood sugar, or using moisturizer on my hands and feet to prevent calluses and cracks.
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Old 04-16-2014, 07:44 AM   #13  
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At least once a day, and whenever else I feel like it. I don't think losing the diet mentality has anything to do with whether or not, or how you use a scale.
In my own experience it is the diet mentality for me. Being tied to a scale several times a day makes me nervous even thinking about it. Nothing good has ever come from stepping on a scale often for me. I do it when I have to and leave it at that. If the number is good I feel pressure to "keep it up" if the number is bad I feel shame. If the number is different than what I thought it would be it could send me into a binge.
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Old 04-16-2014, 12:58 PM   #14  
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I've been in maintenance for over a year and still weigh daily. It helps keep me where I need to be. If I go up a few pounds, I make sure to follow plan until the pounds drop off again.
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Old 04-16-2014, 05:36 PM   #15  
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In my own experience it is the diet mentality for me. Being tied to a scale several times a day makes me nervous even thinking about it. Nothing good has ever come from stepping on a scale often for me. I do it when I have to and leave it at that. If the number is good I feel pressure to "keep it up" if the number is bad I feel shame. If the number is different than what I thought it would be it could send me into a binge.

That used to be true for me too, but mostly because I was taught and told to think that way by almost every women's magazine and weight loss club. It gradually dawned on me that the scale didn't make me feel that way, I chose to have those feelings and chose to tie them to the scale.

Weighing once or twice a day no more ties me to a scale than brushing my teeth 2-3 times a day ties me to a toothbrush.

I did have to completely ditch the shame and expectations though and stop thinking of the scale's number as bad or good. It's a number, neither good or bad. Gaining does not make me a bad person any more than having messy hair or spinach in my teeth. Losing doesn't make me a better person, either. It doesn't even make me a healthier person, because if I do it by unhealthy eatng, my health can plummet along with my weight.

If I didn't have health and mobility issues, I wouldn't bother with the scale at all, because weight loss wouldn't be a priority for me at all. My husband thought I was beautiful and I felt beautiful at nearly 400 lbs.

Now I have health issues that tend to improve with weight loss, but I'm a person who tends to live (and eat) on impulse. Weighing once or even more often per day, reminds me that my first weight goal is "not gaining," and my secondary goal is weight loss.

Even gaining isn't a tragedy. If I woke up tomorrow and found that I'd gained 25 lbs, there'd be no shame in it for me, because I have divorced my self esteem from my weight. I'm a not and never will be a number on the scale or a number on my clothing tags.

There are a lot of things I put more thought into than my weight loss (which is why I'm losing so slowly, and every once in a while backtrack). I don't mind losing slowly, or even gaining occasionally, because it just means something more important to me came up.

I spend 4 minutes a day brushing my teeth. I spend 5-30 seconds a day on the scale, and I don't think of my weight at all, except for the few seconds it takes me to get on the scale and read/ record my weight.

Shame is a choice, it doesn't always feel like a choice, but it is, and I choose to reject shame. My weight is such an unimportant part of me, I feel no reason to tie shame to it. I like who I am, with or without weight loss. I'm only working at weight loss to get a longer, more comfortable and more capable life. If I weighed myself every 30 minutes it wouldn't change how I feel about myself (and even then those 30 or so weigh-ins would still take up less time in my day than brushing my teeth).

Last edited by kaplods; 04-16-2014 at 05:38 PM.
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