Weighing In
by Roz Warren
I just bought
a brand new digital bathroom scale, so naturally
I step on it every time I’m anywhere near
the bathroom in order to watch my weight
fluctuate. A mammoth salad for lunch?
I’m up two pounds! A pleasant ramble with
the Yorkie-poo? They’ve gone! Dinner at my
sister’s house? They’re back! But by
tomorrow morning, they’ll probably be gone
again.
Or not.
Once the
fascination of this new toy wears off, I’ll
probably revert to my usual routine, which is to
weigh myself whenever I happen to be naked in the
bathroom with my glasses on. (Without them, I can
barely see the scale itself, let alone the
numbers.)
A friend once
confided that when it comes to evaluating the
mental health of her girlfriends, she had but one
simple criteria. Their bathroom scale. No scale
at all? Enviably sane and well-adjusted. An
ordinary bathroom scale? Normal. Spa-quality
scale measuring not only weight but body fat
percentage, muscle mass, bone mass and total body
water? Probably needs therapy.
With this in
mind, I logged onto Facebook and asked my
pals how often they weighed themselves.
Many told me
that they just aren’t into it.
“I never
weigh myself.”
“Doctor’s
office only.”
“I threw
away the scale years ago. My feeling is that
unless you are in need of great weight loss,
there is no need for a scale in your life.”
“How
often do I weigh myself? Like, uh, never! If I
can button my jeans, dayenu.”
This “by
the seat of your pants” method of tracking
weight was, in fact, quite popular:
“I
don’t need a scale. I can tell if I gain or
lose weight by how my clothes fit.”
“If my
“Happy Weight Pants” feel too tight, I
know I’m in trouble.”
But my pal
Suzanne wasn’t buying it:
“I have a
scale to keep myself honest,” she told me.
“I usually wear baggy clothes so if I wait
till they feel tight -- it’s too late.”
Many of my
friends, like Suzanne, weigh themselves on a
regular basis. How often?
“Every
morning.“
“Every
day!”
“Every
day. Ugh.”
“Every
few days. It’s the key to staying within a
weight range.”
“Too
often, almost every morning, and for what?
Nothing ever changes, unfortunately.”
Certain multi-taskers
incorporate a weight check into some other part
of their routine.
“I weigh
myself whenever I hit the basement to do the
laundry.“
“I weigh
myself once a week when I go grocery
shopping. My grocery store has one of those old-fashioned
scales.”
I did wonder
for a moment about the following response: “How
often do I weigh myself? Once every 17 years!”
Why 17? Is it
in accordance with some arcane algorithm?
Whenever a particular comet passes the
earth? Every time the Cicadas return and begin
their chirping?
I could have
asked, but I decided that it was more fun not to
know.
So how often,
according to the experts, should you weigh
yourself?
It depends on
what you want. If you need to lose weight,
weighing yourself daily can help. One study,
cited by “Prevention Magazine” in an
article called (with no apparent irony) “Make
Friends With Your Scale,“ found that people
who weighed themselves each day dropped twice as
many pounds as those who got on the scale once a
week.
Whereas
dieters who avoided the scale altogether actually
gained 4 pounds.
Further,
according to the National Weight Control Registry
(who knew there was such a thing??) 44% of their
members who have lost 30 lbs or more and kept
them off for more than a year weigh themselves
daily.
Neither study
said anything about middle-aged women with brand
new bathroom scales who check their weight (to
the ounce!) every few minutes.
Which, for the
sake of my own sanity, is probably just as well.
This
essay first appeared on www.Zestnow.com
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