My Weight Loss Toolbox: Scale

Food/Calorie Journal
Scale
Walking App
Meal Calendar
Digital Food Scale that Weighs in Grams
Weekly, Detailed, Shopping List
Walking Buddy (My Daughter & My Dogs)
Yeti 36oz Rambler
Walking Shoes and Walking Socks

Let’s explore these one at a time.

My scale.  The tool that I hate.  It is not fair to hate the scale.  The scale isn’t making up numbers, only giving you a reflection of what you have been doing.  Sometimes though, it just will not budge!  It will not work in your favor!

I wanted a digital scale.  I needed to be able to see progression (or regression) past just the pound marking.  I wanted better accuracy.  My husband and I were using a digital scale and I thought it worked perfectly fine.  But my husband got annoyed with it and purchased a new one.  It had better metrics and since he works with data for a living, it appeased him and aided in his continuation of weight loss.

Some people say, “Only weigh yourself once a week.”  My husband and I disagree.  Again, he works with data, so he feels, “The more data, the better representation of the picture.”  My husband was able to chart his progression with more data.  I found weighing myself daily necessary.  Very necessary.  When I looked at my numbers, sometimes I saw that I only lost a half of a pound throughout the week.  A half a pound?!  I had some great days in those weeks!  But I also had some bad ones too.  Instead of scrapping the whole week and feeling like it was pointless, weighing myself every day allowed me to have windfalls where I would lose a pound plus in a day.  It was a fantastic feeling!  But it also held me accountable immediately for the bad decisions that I had made the prior day.  It allowed me to learn that pizza, any time, not matter how little, no matter what, was a weight gain day.  Alcohol made me gain weight for three days – not stay the same weight and then lose later – no, gain weight for three days.  Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were not a good idea.  If I ate a large vegetable meal, such as vegetable fajitas, I would gain weight for a day or two as my body sorted out all the extra fiber, and then lose quite a bit of weight after day three.  I would have never learned any of this if I had not weighed myself every day.

Nightly weigh ins are a thing for me too. I would weigh myself in the morning and at night, right before bed. I started doing this so I would not start the morning off badly if I thought I was going to lose weight but in fact stay the same weight. It allowed me to get the disappointment over with at the end of the day instead of starting poorly. As I charted my nightly weigh ins, I found a couple of things. I could lose a maximum of three pounds over night. I could sometimes gain weight overnight if I drank some alcohols. And I would lose more weight if I got six or more hours of sleep and or did not wake up in the middle of the night. Catawba-Lynn was an infant when I started this journey, so sometimes – many times – she needed to be fed, would wet the bed, or would randomly wake up. Doing nightly weigh ins helped me to understand my weight and how it adjusted through my daily actions, not just by calories in, calories out.

I travel with my scale.  Yep.  Vacations, or when my husband had to travel for work, and I came with – the scale came with too.  I do not take “diet breaks” or participate in scheduled “cheat days” because I am not on a diet and I would only be cheating myself.  I changed my life to continually work at succeeding at maintaining a healthy life.  I am not “done.”  The work is not done.  I work on this every day – and many days I fail at it.  But I use my tools to fix my mistakes and get back on track.  Any progress is good progress but using the tools available to you can help boost your progress.  Knowledge is power, right?  Become knowledgeable of your body and how you function, and you will do better in this weight loss journey.

Looking forward to talking to you guys about my walking app escapades!  See you later and hope all is well!