From skwigg's journal:
I've noticed a couple of changes since I quit weighing myself.
My food choices are more genuine (as in genuinely what I want). I used to consider how my decisions might affect my weight the next day. I knew I was going to see the number, so I might skip the bread or go easy on the salt so as not to startle myself. Today, I ate a bunch of pickles and barbecued pork at lunch. Do you know what all that sodium is going to do to the scale in the morning? Yeah, me either. HA!
I'm eating until I'm full and not until I think I should think I'm full. There's a difference! My "full" was being subtly influenced by weight concerns. Without those, I no longer have the "stop eating" gymnastics. I used to have to talk myself into stopping, remind myself that I could eat another great meal soon, have a finisher, have an activity to look forward to afterward, that kind of thing. But if I just allow myself to keep eating, I hit a point where I genuinely don't want any more food. It's like, "Yep. Good. Done. Not another bite." That feels so different from the trickery that used to go on. My body clearly tells me when it's had enough food. I didn't know it could do that because I was stopping it short most of the time, knowing I was going to step on the scale the next morning.
Aaagh! The diet thinking runs deep. Even when I'm sure it's all gone, I still find myself prying its little claws off of my brain.
These have been really refreshing discoveries though. It's NICE not to have any concern about what the scale is going to do in the morning. I don't worry that my unwatched weight is going to destroy me somehow because I'm still eating to appetite. I'm sure my energy balance system has it all under control, probably more so than when I was meddling. It is a little odd to have no numbers to judge by. No calories, no macros, no scale weight, no body fat percentage, no tape measurements. But I know that I'm happy, I look and feel good, and my clothes fit. That about covers it!
From skwigg's journal:
I had some weight thoughts as I was debating whether to bother stepping on the scale this month, or ever again. If I like the way I look and feel, and I like the way I eat, what the scale says is completely irrelevant. I was going to throw "like the way my clothes fit" in there too, but then I realized that if you don't feel comfortable and confident in your clothes, that's a shopping issue, not a food/weight issue.
The thing is, I've been all different scale weights and NOT liked the way I looked, felt, or ate. You think a number will make you feel a certain way, but it doesn't. Your habits and the way you treat yourself determine how you feel. If you aren't happy, it's the habits and self-talk that need to be addressed, not the numbers.
From skwigg's journal:
There were a few things I was genuinely worried about if I stopped weighing myself daily. Some didn't happen at all and others weren't nearly as problematic as I'd imagined. Then of course there were all the benefits I hadn't seen coming.
I was worried that I would gain a ton of weight obviously, or illogically considering how stable my weight had been for the last five years. That didn't happen. I was going to say, "nothing about the way I eat changed," but it did change. I eat more overall and more carbs of all kinds. More cereal, sandwiches, fruit, pizza, potatoes, pasta, and cake. Zuzka would be horrified. :-) But if I'm going by how I feel and what my body wants, that was it. My body's energy balance system is finally allowed to do its thing without interference. It seems to be putting the extra food to good use somehow because it's not showing up as body fat.
I was worried that with no numbers to go by I would fall back into obsessive body checking. Years ago, I had all these disordered guidelines involving checking my waist with my hands, the fit of rings, belly button depth, that kind of thing. I didn't want to go there again and I didn't, mostly. I did develop a slight fixation with my lower abdomen. Like did it always stick out slightly or is it new? Is it all the bread? Maybe the flaxseeds? Am I eating too much? What should I do? I settled on not analyzing my abs to death every time I passed a mirror and that solved the whole (imaginary) problem. If I zoom out, the big picture is that my clothes fit and I'm fit. Nothing needs fixing.
Finally, until it left, I hadn't recognized my low grade anxiety surrounding carbs, sodium, and water. I was still manipulating all of those to some degree for lower morning scale readings. Things like not drinking too much water at night so I'd be a little dehydrated and lighter in the morning, or drinking lots of it early in the day to wash out water retention. I would worry about eating in restaurants or cooking something salty/carby if it was too close to what was usually my monthly low scale reading. Because what if I ruined it!?!? The more important question is what if it didn't matter? Once I no longer looked at or worried about the scale, all of those lingering nutty behaviors fell away. It's been so liberating!
From skwigg's journal:
I have completely settled into my scale breakup. Goodbye and good riddance to that thing. I still marvel at the level of freedom I feel without it. I thought I had reduced my diet thinking dramatically, even with "peaceful" daily weighing. Ha! I had no concept. As long as I was weighing myself, I was considering how my food affected my weight, consciously or not. That's not exactly empowering. I think I'd become numb to it. It wasn't emotional anymore where my day would be made or ruined by the scale, but why was I even looking? Why did I care how my food choices affected a random number? Then it hit me. Control is the opposite of trust. Gah! I didn't totally trust myself so I was clinging tightly to something...stupid. LOL
Do you know what I consider now? How my food choices will affect my: appetite, workouts, sleep, energy, recovery, mood, things that are actually relevant to my well-being. It works so much better! The more I do it, the more I trust. The more I trust, the sillier those fears seem about "giving up" "living in denial" or "letting myself go." Clearly that's not what's going on here! I'm more in tune and taking better care of myself than ever. Emotional needs are being met, not just physical ones, not just math.