throwing away the scale...

[shootingstar]

I certainly have lived chunks of life/several years at different times without a bathroom scale at home.

Person should do what helps them feel good and healthy. Then forget about the weight. If the latter works, it makes living better.

[OakLeaf]

I weighed myself for a while at home. Then I didn't. It wasn't really a conscious thing to stop. When I was a gym rat, I'd weigh myself at the gym most days. Now I'm not, and I get weighed at the doctor's office when I go.

My weight has been stable for quite a while. There was a time in my life when it was very unstable. Weighing myself didn't have any effect that I noticed. The last time I lost a large amount of weight, it was when I stopped a particular medication, and made no other changes. I didn't notice the med causing the weight gain, because prior to that, it really hadn't been stable. It stabilized while I was on the med, and then stabilized again nearly 25# lighter when I stopped it.

Except that by "stable," I mean that hydration and GI tract contents (and hormones, back when I had them ) could cause fluctuations within a 6-7# range within a week, and my weight will stay within that range over the long term. But if I were really obsessing over the scale, fluctuations of 5% of my body weight might definitely work on my head.

When I was spending the winters in a cloudy climate, I'd gain 4-5# over the winter and lose it back again as soon as I started getting exposure to natural sunlight in the spring. I'll typically drop 2-3# in the last weeks of marathon training. It really doesn't matter whether I get on the scale or not. It's just that I'm aware of them because of having been on the scale before.

[Grits]

I weigh myself weekly, no more. At times in my life when I let months go by without weighing, I found that the weight gradually crept up until I had to work really hard to get back to my normal weight. I would rather catch it when it is just a pound or two rather than ten pounds. However, I don't obsess over the scale, and it doesn't ruin my day regardless. You might need to give it up for your own reasons.

[Miranda]

Thanks, ladies, good insights.

While I am happy to not see my scale go up when I get on it here of lately, I am just frustrated to not see it going down. It's been two months that I have religiously kept a food journal, in which I also record my weight. And to be frank, I am just sick of it. I have lost the weight I gained during my broken ankle surgeries. But now the scale has just been stuck.

I am not happy with how heavy and fluffy I am. I want to be leaner/lighter and more muscular/defined. But I am thinking maybe the common sense approach kept track of in my head might be better, i.e. did I eat healthy today? how's my exercise for the week been?

I have a friend who is very thin. I almost used to be that thin. And she is a slave to her scale, her diet with every piece of food she puts in her mouth, lots of exercise, the size of clothes only being a certain number, etc. While she is a beautiful little woman, I still just think, and for what? Is all this energy of unhappiness to stay that way worth it? I think I am crossing over to the camp that I don't think it really is.