My Day 7 Recap and the scale being a liar go hand in hand today. To get ahead of the recap, I drank my gallon, did a blog post, and then did upper body weightlifting and 30 minutes on an inclined treadmill for my workout. We will get that out of the way.
But I started the day stepping on the scale. Which… I’m not even sure why because 1-it’s ben a week and 2-I told myself I wouldn’t get on the scale until the end of my challenge.
The scale showed I was down 4 pounds since the start of my challenge a week ago. Now, this definitely means I was probably holding some water weight when I weighed myself a week ago because losing 4 pounds in 7 days is crazy. It’s also not what I’m aiming to do. I am aiming to lose my weight slowly so that I will not gain it back again. BUT TELL ME HOW I IMMEDIATELY STARTED BEATING MYSELF UP?!
My brain went on a whole thing saying what I am doing isn’t working, I’m not losing enough, I must not have weighed correctly at the beginning of the challenge, why am I wasting my time, etc etc etc. Everything that my brain always does to sabotage me.
Let me be clear that I know this is insane. I get it. I know this is not normal thinking. I obviously have a negative relationship with the scale. I get it.
Then I immediately let this ruin my day. I was weird about myself and annoyed at myself and wanted to give up. All day. I started with counting everything like normal and I did get my workouts in. But once I got to dinner I was like “fuck this” and I didn’t track dinner at all. And I know I overate. Not a binge at all, but more than I needed to for sure. And it wasn’t even THAT great. And then I was even more depressed about it.
Late last night I decided I wasn’t letting this day happen again. I was going to stop feeling sorry for myself and keep going because good God woman, it’s only been a week!
I did get on the scale this morning because I wanted to start repairing this relationship and be realistic about it. And the scale showed an additional 2 pound lost… so the scale is a liar. SO many things can change your weight quickly and drastically. And a gain doesn’t mean it is a fat gain. I think we all need to use the scale as another form of data, but not the tell/all be all that can make or break our day.
I need to fix my relationship with the scale. I think my options are to either only weigh at the end of my challenge, or weigh every single morning and track it. By weighing every single morning I think I will learn how my body changes, what makes me hold water, and how often the scale can change. I’m not sure which one I am going to do yet.
Please don’t let yourself be controlled by the scale. There are so many more ways to measure progress! Taking measurements and full body photos are two great ways to do this. And if you are feeling like me and controlled by the scale, let’s do this together and take our control back!