Divorcing my scale!

Well, not actually divorcing so much as legally separating from my scale.  For months now my scale has been tormenting me by not going below 168 lbs.   

I saw 166 lbs. once, but only for a couple of seconds.  When I got back on the scale to take a photo of that momentous number because it meant I had lost a total of 140 lbs., the scale shot back to 168 lbs.  Somehow in less than 60 seconds, I gained 2 lbs. and I never saw 166 lbs. again.   There was no photo to be had that day to prove that I weighed 166 lbs., if even for a fleeting moment!  This is how my scale taunts me on a regular basis.   

During these last few months, every time I saw 168 lbs. on that digital display, the "rubber-band effect" occurred and I soon returned to 179 lbs. in a blink of an eye.  The "rubber-band effect" is what I called it when I was morbidly obese and had lost a few pounds only to shoot back to 300 lbs. time and time again, year after year.  I felt like my body was a rubber band that could only stretch so far below that 300 number before the band snapped back to where it had been in the first place.  I felt like my body rejected any weight unless it had a "3" in front of it.   

During my journey, the rubber-band effect happened again during my 16-month plateau between the summer of 2013 and the end of 2014, and now it's happening once more in the high 160s to high 170s.  Every time I saw 179 lbs. again on that scale, it'd take me weeks to lose it and get back to 168 lbs., only to shoot back to the 170s in less than two days.  It's a game my scale plays with me and I've been the unwitting participant.  Okay, yes, I played a part in it, too, by sometimes over eating, but the scale sabotages me because I become frustrated when it doesn't cooperate which then leads me to over eat.  It's the scale's fault for sure! 

It's annoyingly frustrating!  

Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic about (and incredibly proud of) my accomplishments to date, especially considering I hadn't seen the 160s - or even the 170s - in over 30 years, but my frustration arises because I've come so far and it's just incredibly annoying that it's taking me so long to get to the end of my journey.  People often ask me, well, not so much ask as declare, "You're done losing weight, right?"  The answer is no, I'm not.  If I can, I'd like to get to 150 lbs. so that I can have a buffer to indulge once in a while.  If I stay within the 150 - 160 lbs. range for the rest of my life, I'll be happy.  I'm happy now, but I still feel that I have not yet reached the end of my journey.  I don't know if I'll ever see 150 lbs. on that digital tormentor of mine, but as was true of my entire journey so far, the only thing I can do is take it one day at a time and keep working at it.  As I've stated several times, dealing with my food addiction is a daily struggle, and although it's easier now that I'm on this side of the scale, it's a constant struggle nonetheless.    

The irony is that no matter what my scale has been showing these last few months, my body has continued to shrink.  My trainers tell me it's because I'm replacing fat with muscle.  My "shrinkage" is not my imagination or delusion either.  Body fat percentages kept decreasing, measurements decreased, and my clothes sizes dropped, too.  I've seen changes to my body in the mirror, and I felt these changes with my hands in that I'm getting more boney in new places.  A friend has been telling me for months to get rid of the scale and just worry about how my clothes fit and to only worry about body fat percentage as the true indicator of my success.  He recently read to me an article that stated muscle weighs twice as much as fat does and in the article it specifically said not to use the scale to determine success because of this fact. 

Even Body Mass Index ("BMI") is not a true indicator because it only considers height and weight to come up with a number that is compared to a chart to determine healthy body weight.  One of the reasons BMI is not a good indicator is that it does not take into account a person's fitness level.  For example, a professional athlete who has no body fat will weigh more because of all the muscle they've acquired through years of continual workouts so BMI might show that person to be overweight when, in fact, that person could not be more physically fit. 

It's all a numbers game.  We determine our success with numbers on the scale, clothes sizes, BMI charts, body fat percentages, etc.  The question is on which number do you base your success?

Both Flaminia ("Fla") and Tunde, my trainers, have been telling me the same thing:  stop getting on the scale.  Put the scale away.  Better yet, get rid of the scale.  Tunde often asks me how many times I've gotten on the scale since I saw her last.  My response is always, "You mean just today?"  And that's a sad fact:  I get on that scale several times a day which, logically, is a ridiculous thing to do.  It's also self defeating to base my success on that number because it sabotages me.  How?  Because if the scale shows I've lost weight, I tend to become a bit more lax with my calories.  Once the scale shows I've gained (which doesn't take much), I become frustrated and tend to over eat out of frustration although nowadays my "binging episodes" are meager in comparison to how the old me used to binge, plus it's easier for the new me to get back on track rather than lose all incentive as the old me used to do.  Even so, these little hiccups keep me from my goal and I have no one to blame but myself.

When I started this journey on Weight Watchers in late 2012, I only got on the scale once a week and that was tough.  I had to force myself to only check my weight once a week, but I did well on my journey when I did just that.  When I started to work with Fla in late 2014, I continued to weigh myself once a week and did incredibly well.  However, as I saw more and more success in 2015, my impatience got the better of me and I started to get on the scale twice a week, then eventually it became a daily event until I became so obsessed with that digital jokester that I just had  to get on it several times a day to judge how I was doing.

I understand logically that our bodies fluctuate normally every day and throughout the day.  Our weight "gain" could be consuming too much sodium and consequently retaining water, building muscle, or whatever else our bodies do without our permission.  But emotionally how can someone with a weight problem such as I had stay away from that jokester that informs me of my failures/successes in seconds?  It's nearly impossible to stay away.

A couple of weeks ago, out of frustration and disappointment at myself for letting that digital charlatan get the better of me, I put it away in a linen closet.  I have to admit, there's no way in hell I'll ever get rid of it like Tunde suggested, so I compromised and put it away, and thereby starting my legal separation from my digital tormentor.  I've pulled it out a few times to check the status of my weight, but I've stayed away from it quite well these last couple of weeks.  The result is I'm more concerned with what I'm eating during the day and staying within calories rather than worrying about what the scale is going to show the next time I get on it.  As for my actual weight?  It has stabilized at 170 lbs. which technically means I lost the 9 lbs. I regained several times over.  In essence, staying away from the scale is working.

My plan is to just keep plugging along, one day at a time, while ignoring the scale's muffled tauntings from inside the linen closet, and, hopefully, I can eventually get to my personal goal.  However, these days I'm putting more validity in the evidence of my physical "shrinkage" than on the number displayed on my digital tormentor.