#22 The Why-Bother-Blues

The slippery slope of the SCALE.

Sometimes the scale can be your friend and other times your frenemy. Let me explain. Maintaining one's weight loss takes vigilance, not obsessiveness, but just honest day to day oversight. To aid in this endeavor, there are different methods. Here are some:

-how we feel

-how our clothing fits and feels on our bodies

-the mirror

-fat calipers

-the scale

-honest friends and family members

For me, the scale [used almost every morning] is my aid of choice. I believe that clothing stretches [everyone knows that a pair of jeans just out of the dryer in the morning feels very differently by the end of a day], family and friend's moods apply to how they see you, there are some great 'skinny' mirrors out there that can trick you and it's too difficult to use fat calipers on yourself. So for me, the scale works. Now here comes the psychology of the scale.

My happy weight is 133-138. Sometimes, around 137-138 I get a little tense and start to watch what I'm eating. Other times I say to myself, just screw it [in less nicer terms]. Here I am watchful of everything that I eat and exercising 5-6 days a week and the scale isn't being friendly. This 138 hover can send me either way; like rein me in or make me feel frustrated and give me the why-bother-blues. This is the heavy hover of weight psychology. Wait till you read the light end hover of weight psychology. When the scale hovers around 134, I either feel so good that I tend to allow myself foods that are not part of my maintenance regime or I feel so good that I stay in control and revel at this weight. I never know until I step on that scale how I'm going to react.

Now I know what you are thinking. Good lord, we're talking 4ish pounds here. Yup! What can I say? This is the emotional roller coaster of weight maintenance. I don't want you to think that I or we maintainers never give ourselves a break. Sometimes, weeks go by where I'm on auto pilot. I'm feeling good, exercising, eating healthy and actually forget to weigh myself. But with every success, comes the F-word, and there are those days or weeks that feel like torture, where food controls all behavior and thought. Thankfully, I know this is usually an emotional and/or hormonal hiccup and food will become a non-issue again... until the next cycle.

I want to end this enemy/frenemy babble on a happy and positive note. Here goes -- I'm maintaining. I'm not going up and down the scale by 10 or 20 or 30 pounds. I don't have to constantly start a diet. I don't have all those "heavy" emotions that come with dieting, like failure, fat, doomed, denied, etc. Ninety-nine percent of the time I feel really good and successful and happy and for those of you who read my last babble, I got rid of that picture in my head of the perfect me and have embraced that I am the perfect me right now.

one way to maintain

For those out there maintaining, I say-- hurrah for us! Having dieted and maintained, I think we can all agree that this might just be the harder job.... As Robert Collier says, "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."