Uh... Scale/weight help please
 

I'm posting this from my iPhone since the Internet is down at work. Apologies for any errors..

I had a bit of an interesting morning. I stepped on the scale and it said I weighed 121.

Unless I magically lost 10 pounds after my weights session last night, I think it's rather impossible for me to suddenly weigh so little.

So I was upset. I figured my scale was broken now and I'd have to get a new one. Daily weighing is a thing for me and I really want to keep it up so I can maintain.

So I took a shower and thought about it for a whole and took the scale out again. Without me on it, it was firmly at 0 (it's an analog scale). Every other morning it started out at 10.

So...was I 10 pounds off the entire time? Am I really in the low 120s or is my scale borked? I don't care either way...I like where I am now but it's so confusing right now.

Even if it was off the whole time it doesn't change my starting weight. At the doctors office I weighed in at 200 before I started college.

It's just...blah! Stupid scales! I just want a way to monitor my weight and be sure I stay on track! :(

Edit: I also want to add that I'm not the only one who likely uses it. Someone else in the house could have either messed it up or fixed it without me knowing

Of course the obvious answer is to ask if you have access to a different scale? You'll probably need to get access to a different one to verify. We had an analog scale when I was growing up, and it was pretty accurate from what I recall. But we always had ours set to 0.

Hey girl. I had to change my scale last year and after I got a new one I found out I was actually 7lbs more than what the old scale indicated. But I weighed more at the gym scale too. Get a new one and adjust appropriately, and maybe recheck at your doctors office? It's a pain in the butt....my scale needs a new battery. It magically started counting down this morning from 190 all the way down to the the 160's!! HAHA I WISH!

I do have access to another scale at my gym. I weighed myself on it last night out of curiosity and got 130.

I thought that was interesting for several reasons: 1) it was towards the end of the day so I had eaten, drank etc. 2) I had clothes and sneakers on.



I just figured that scale was "off." maybe it isn't all that off :(

I don't know that I would have kept losing if I had actually hit the 120s at some point... I mean I do like where I am.... But... Ack!

Kara that is a great idea! Thank you :) I have a set of 12 pound weights and a 15 so I can try using one of those

oooooo great trick! I'm gonna test mine too!

@#%@!

Turns out the scale is right now. I plunked down a 15lb weight on it and the scale read exactly 15lbs.

I suddenly felt as if I were too thin, weighing in at 121lbs, but it's right in the middle of the BMI for my height... and I guess it makes sense since I can fit into 1s and 0s sometimes...

The thing is, My highest known weight was still 200lbs because I weighed that much just before I went to college at the doctor's office. So I guess I've lost almost 80lbs since that..but I know I even weighed more that that at some point but I'd have to grab my health records...

I guess I've lost around 100lbs since high school. That's kind of crazy.

WOW girl! That's amazing!!!! :cp: What a nice surprise eh? ;)

If you're able to maintain your weight without starving, if you don't feel lethargic, etc, then you are at a good weight for you. Don't go by what they scale says. Go by how you feel. Each person has their own weight that
is best for them. bMI is aonly arrange for a population. Mot people of your hit will be between x pounds and y pounds. It's up to you to figure out where your magic number is.

Yup, the scale is just a diagnostic tool, as is BMI. Go by how you feel and what you can maintain, for sure. That's a huge amount of weight lost and you have done remarkably well. Bravo!

Ha! Yes I guess it's better this way than finding out I was 10lbs heavier, right?

I guess my worry is that I'll go too far and end up underweight. I'm supposed to have a large frame (according to online calculators). Or maybe I don't. I don't know.

I'm just going to do what you said and find where I'm comfortable...and I think it's here—whatever my weight is.

The difficulty right now is eating enough to maintain...I should be eating 1800+ (even with my new "lower" weight accounted for) and I'm having a hard time getting up to that! When I was hitting 1600 cals a day I was still losing!

Thank you...and I feel I can maintain this. I did have very little difficulty getting down to this weight and right now I'm having trouble eating enough to maintain! I guess I'll get there eventually.

Best way to solve the maintenance issue, if you're not getting enough calories, is add in more fat. It is both nourishing and very energy dense, for the space it takes up ;)

Butter on vegetables, eggs fried in lard, coconut oil in a smoothie, etc etc. incredibly healthy and a quick way to wrack up calories.

I'm curious, sontaikle. Were you happy with your body 10-15 pounds ago when you thought you weighed between 141-146? Or did you simply want to reach goal no matter how you looked? In other words, if you had known that you had actually reached goal 10-15 pounds ago, would you have actively stopped trying to lose weight or would you have continued? I ask because a lot of 3FCers claim that they are not slaves to the scale and that they will know their goal weight when they reach it. But then they become slaves to their scale and only stop losing weight because they've reached their predetermined goal weight. It's never clear if they are happy with their bodies only because they reached goal or if they were actually happy with their bodies before they reached goal and simply continued to lose weight because they really wanted to reach their goal. Your situation is a unique one considering the unreliability of your scale, so I would be interested in your response.

This is something I've been trying to figure out. Did I like the way I looked when I thought I was 146 pounds (and interestingly I have pictures of me in a tight dress at that time)? Or did I want to go lower because of the scale? Would I have stopped then because I was at my goal?

I've thought about it a lot and I think the scale really did me a favor being broken. I don't think I would have ever gone past 130 had I known when I actually got there or I would have started getting alarmed. I was happy with myself 15 pounds ago, but I wasn't satisfied. When I hit the weight I am now (which is where my body seems to be settling) I'm actually pretty darn happy. I dont have a perfect body (but nobody ever will ;)), but I feel like I'm a heck of a lot better than I was 15 pounds ago.

Although this all also explains why I'm getting to the point where if I lost a few more pounds my ribs will start sticking out too much! I shouldn't have been there at 131 pounds, but if I truly am large-framed (or perhaps medium-large) then it certainly makes sense at 121 pounds!

I kind of freaked out when I found out I was really 121 pounds, but I should have seen this earlier. I had plenty of signs—my wii fit always weighed me in 10lbs lighter, the scale at the gym weighed me in lighter and I was a smaller sizes than others at the weight I thought I was—but I guess I ignored them for some reason. Maybe I couldn't handle it? I'm not sure. This whole weight loss thing is psychological as much as it is physical.

I guess when you've been told your whole life that you can't ever be "small" that it does a number on you.