Often when a scale is "off" it isn't by a constant weight, but rather it's off by a percentage so the more weight being measured, the more inaccurate the reading.
But honestly, you can drive yourself nuts worrying about the minutia. If you truly believe that a difference of 5 lb really makes you a "cheater" or about those 5 lb making a meaningful difference in who you are - you're going to constantly be miserable and drive yourself insane. I really think the biggest enemy of weight control is making small things "mean" big things. I think most weight loss attempts end in failure because of the difficulty in seeing the "big picture."
Whenever I fell (or rather threw myself) off a weight loss plan in the past it was because I used some mistake as proof that I couldn't or wouldn't succeed. But even a HUGE mistake, like a 10,000 calorie binge is a small thing in the scheme of things. People don't get fat on one big mistake, they become overweight on thousands of little ones. Five pounds do not define you.
A scale has to be a tool, not a measure of your worth or worthiness. Your healthy goal weight really needs to be a range or you're going to feel absolutely horrible whenever your weight fluctuates a few ounces. And if you're going to tolerate fluctuation at your goal weight, you've got to tolerate some fluctuation in your progressing weights also.
Weighing less may be an excellent idea, but for me, the opposite broke me of my scale stress. I weighed myself on as many scales as I could find (I owned two, my doctor's office had two, my TOPS group had another, I even weighed myself on the mall scales). I weighed myself daily (and at times several times a day), and I wrote the weights down.
Wow - I got a lot more than 5 lbs in fluctuations. There was almost 7 lb difference just between the two scales in the doctor's office (and yes it still bugs me a little to be weighed on the "heavy" scale).
You aren't a number. And weight isn't the best indication of health, fitness or even appearance, it's just a convenient one.
Last edited by kaplods; 11-15-2008 at 08:23 PM.
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