Interesting that it surprises you. It's common advice among those in the Intuitive Eating community to ditch the scale so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

There are plenty of ways for me to understand what is happening with my body. I can gauge by how I feel, how my clothes fit, how my energy levels are, how much pain I don't have in my joints, how well I fit into a seat, I can measure myself and try on clothes. I'm not limited by not knowing what I weigh every moment of every day. I'm not at the point where I don't care at all, but I've managed to cut down from daily weigh ins to only weighing myself every 4-6 weeks. I'm not really missing out on any important information by cutting down on my weigh ins.

I'm not knocking it, I'm not one of THOSE people lol. If you feel empowered by weighing yourself frequently then that's great. But it doesn't work for me, when I find myself weighing more frequently it's usually a sign that I've got some inner turmoil in my life and I'm just grasping at some semblance of control. I don't wish to control my weight loss in any way, my ultimate goal is not weight loss. My goal is to be comfortable in my own skin, trust that my body knows what it needs, eat the foods that make me feel good, and not be controlled by an eating disorder. Weight loss is a very pleasant side effect of those accomplishments.

And my real track record is that the less I weigh myself the more effortlessly the pounds come off. The more I weigh myself the more weight I gain. What should I do? It's a no brainer.

I think that what she means is that she assumed that you would have reached a comfortable point with the scale where you weighing yourself or not weighing yourself does not affect how effortless (or effortful?) your weightloss is or how comfortable you feel. Maybe a challenge could be weighing yourself a ton and trying not to feel stress about it.

I think I'm just not very knowledgeable about the Intuitive Eating community...

I think when I try and understand the reasons for intuitive eating, I say to myself "well if I were to go that route, it would be because I don't want anything - food, drugs, a scale - to have control over me" but that may not be the same for everyone. It sounds like it's not the same for MOST, actually. So I guess that goes to show I just haven't looked into it enough. But you did post outside the Intuitive Eating boards, so I thought you were opening up the subject to a wider audience purposefully (I'd probably have tried to learn more first if it was in the IE boards).

For myself, I think it's interesting how my weight changes from day to day, and I can see, for example, that I've "gained five pounds" in a day and attribute that to salt intake, which in turn explains why I've been feeling weird the last day or two. I might not attribute that to salt without the added information from the scale. Now, with intuitive eating I'm sure you're more in tune with your body's signals than I am with mine. But that doesn't mean the information is entirely useless.

I don't find it disheartening or motivating to step on a scale, so my thoughts on scales wouldn't be relevant for you. I guess the place I was coming from was from thinking you're trying to be at peace with everything in the world around you (scales inclusive), not just at peace within yourself.

Peace within yourself (or comfortable in your own skin and trusting in your body, as you put it) is a perfectly noble goal. Nothing wrong with that.

I'm not there yet. Hopefully when I've reached easy comfort with IE I won't feel like it's necessary to weigh myself at all. Or maybe the number on the scale won't trigger me back into dieting, because that's what it does to me now. I don't see why I should weigh myself more, it's not like I don't know what I weigh. I don't need to witness water weight, I've done the scale thing for so many years and I need some freedom for it.

It might be different for you faiora, maybe you're new to the dieting game but I've played it for a long time and it's had its way with my psyche. There was a time when it served its purpose and now I need space from it, I just feel better and eat better and look better when I'm not constantly weighing myself.

I don't want it to have a hold over me, but I don't want it to be of any significance in my life either.

In all fairness there are no IE boards, we only have a monthly thread in the General diet section. But this particular issue is not exclusive to IE nor do I mean it to be. Many people struggle with the scale and can relate to the post.

It's not a crime to not know anything about IE. A year ago I didn't know anything about it either. And I did not come to it because I didn't want anything to have control over me like food or drugs, quite the opposite in that I don't believe any substance including food has any control over me. The reason I turned to IE is the same for everyone who turns to IE. They're sick and tired of diets, of counting calories and points, of weighing themselves and scrutinizing every morsel of food that they eat. I realized that the more I was dieting the more I was gaining weight and I was sick of it. IE is about learning to trust yourself, rebuilding your relationship with yourself and with food, and above all else learning to enjoy your life.

People who weigh themselves daily lose more weight.

If you see your weight going up, you can alter your diet. It's a wakeup call. If you see you have gained five pounds, you can make a plan to lose those pounds.

Weight gain is a gradual process. You might not realize that you are gaining.

Weigh yourself every morning since this is more accurate than once a week. Respond accordingly. If your weight goes up, maybe you need to really watch your diet and walk another mile to compensate. Without this hard data, you won't know what to do.

Maybe that would be the optimal route but given Wannabeskinny's relationship with the scale which she has detailed in this thread, I think the route she has chosen is the best for her mental well-being at the moment. Weight loss is not purely physical or logical for many of us, as much as that would be ideal.

Also, I prefer to weigh myself once a week. Less pressure and it's accurate in the long run anyway.

With all due respect, I think this might be more true for the featherweights among us. I can shift up/down five pounds in a matter of hours (just did overnight actually) just from water weight changes! (see signature graph) ...I haven't been eating fewer calories since my last weight peak - just less salt. Salty food can throw my numbers upwards for a few days.

I don't disagree with daily weighing, and it's certainly true that daily data is more useful than weekly data... but I don't think adjusting food on a daily basis based on weight is a good thing. I think that needs to be evaluated at most once per month, because you can't get a really good trend line sooner than that.

Anyway, we're kind of off-topic in the thread because Wannabeskinny does Intuitive Eating... which I've gathered means she's not eating based on what the scale says, but rather based on what her body says.

I recently wrote a post in my blog that sort of looks at the psychology behind losing vs. gaining weight and why (for many) gaining weight seems so much easier.

For me, I am weighing daily (and seeing fluctuations daily since I am so heavy and can retain a lot of water at any given time), but my perspective has totally changed. If I gain weight one day my mentality is "okay, whatever, at least I know" and if I lose weight then it's "okay, whatever, at least I know". In other words, I see the scale as merely a useful tool that doesn't hold any power over me one way or the other. I only record the weight once per week.

It does however take a lot of inner strength to reach this point where you can completely detach yourself emotionally from the process and for many, many years I really struggled (and failed, time and time again) with this. IMO Emotions + Micromanagement = Recipe for frustration and failure.

If no scale helps you detach yourself from the process then more power to you! Over time, that might change but you ultimately know yourself best.

I like what you say about Emotions + micromanagement equally a recipe for failure, that's so very true and has been my personal downfall every step of the way. All the tools I've used to manage my weight were meant to be empowering but in the end I was running around in circles worrying over the failure of each one of them and I got more and more frustrated.

I don't know about inner strength having anything to do with it though. Honestly I am not a weak willed person and I don't suffer from lack of strength in any way. Dependence on these "tools" is what makes me feel weak ultimately.

Bottom line, everyone takes a different road to get where they are going. I've dropped the calorie counting, the food scale, I've stopped tracking my weight, tracking my exercise, wearing a fitbit, or making charts. I stopped all this over 6 months ago and I've been looking better, feeling better and losing weight ever since. You can't pay me to go back to making myself nuts over those things.

To me it's clear that you're coming from a place of strength. I admire your ability to trust your own body/mind and detach yourself from a powerful (and often noxious) cultural script. Bravo.

F.