Daily weigh ins vs. weekly weigh ins

"Should I weigh in every day or just once a week?" It's a common question. And I'm going to give an answer that is very true, but one I think people don't hear enough:

Scientifically speaking, you should probably weigh yourself every day.

Now, this is a post I've been mulling over this for a while. Erin (who, by the way, has a great blog that I'd encourage you to check out) commented on a post of mine not too long back that "the almighty 'they' discourage weighing in daily." And in terms of the diet world, she's right. Weight Watchers, Spark People, and most other diet plans and diet books say you should only weigh once a week. The typical justifications are that the scale can change greatly from day to day, meaning it's not all that accurate, and that there are emotional downsides with seeing false losses and gains throughout the week. Essentially, conventional wisdom in the diet world says that weighing yourself every day can discourage you and stress you out. But conventional wisdom isn't always right.

Weighting yourself every day is actually a good idea according to science. A 2005 study showed that "Dieters who weighed themselves regularly shed more pounds over a 24-month period than people who didn't regularly weigh themselves. Those who weighed themselves daily lost the most." Another University of Minnesota study "found that those who weighed themselves daily lost an average of 12 pounds over 2 years; weekly scale watchers lost only 6. The once-a-day group also was less likely to regain weight loss." And there are more studies out there with much the same message.

So weighing daily makes you likely to lose more weight and keep it off once it's gone. But what about the emotional damage of daily weigh ins? At least one study in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology says that's a myth. Here's what they found:

Several recent studies suggest that daily weighing is important for long-term weight control, but concerns have been raised about possible adverse psychological effects.
...
We found no evidence that increases in frequency of weighing or daily weighing per se had any adverse effects in this study population. Rather, increases in self-weighing were associated with increases in dietary restraint (p less than 0.001), decreases in disinhibition (p less than 0.003), and decreases in depressive symptoms (p less than 0.002). Moreover, those who weighed daily at 18 months were less likely to report having = 4 binge episodes per month (p = 0.03). Daily weighing appears to be an important aspect of weight loss maintenance and was not associated with adverse psychological effect.

So there's scientific evidence that weighing daily isn't emotionally damaging. It even seems to decrease depression and binging! And why are we supposed to weigh in weekly, again?

The answer to the question "should I weigh myself every day or once a week?" seems to be every day. Scientifically speaking, if you want to play the probabilities, you should step on your scale every day.

That said, just because something is likely to be right for you doesn't mean something is right for you. If you're not comfortable with daily weigh ins, then you shouldn't weigh in daily. It might be that you get extremely depressed by stepping on the scale, or that you truly can't stand seeing the fluctuations. Maybe for you this journey is more the emotional or even spiritual aspects, and that while you do want to track your weight, you don't care much about the numbers. You need to do what works for you.

My advice:

Seriously consider weighing in every day. It may not work for you, but there's some good evidence that it more likely to work than you might think. But, at the end of the day, trust yourself. If you don't want to do daily weigh ins, don't do daily weigh ins. Stick with weekly, monthly, or whatever else makes you happy. The right answer for you might not be the right answer for everyone else. And with that in mind, next time you hear someone mindlessly parrot the diet industry's standard "you shouldn't weigh yourself more than once a week," let them know that science, at least, says otherwise.

Oh, and to answer the requests from yesterday, I will review the Body Bugg once I get mine. It shipped last night, and should be arriving on the 22nd.

Tuesday Weigh In

Weight: 248.0

Well . . .

I only lost .2 pounds this past week. This is a major disappointment. I'm glad I did still manage to lose, but I'm more distressed by just how bad the number is, and how off track I've been.

I didn't go to the gym yesterday.

Sigh.

I'm saddened and I'm stressed. I feel like I'm losing my fire. I'm just not doing as good a job as I used to. I'm not as dedicated. I'm just lost.

I think I'm going to hold back from posting daily weigh ins for a bit, and see what happens. I'm still going to weigh myself daily, since it's an important motivator, but I've been stressing over posting them. It makes me feel like I have to start every post talking about my weigh in.

Okay, here's where things get interesting. There are two different ways I could start this next paragraph, and I'm not honestly sure which one is correct.

Option one: Weigh ins are important, but weigh ins aren't everything. Yes, the scale matters, but the scale lies too. What's going on in your head and your day to day habits are important, independently of the scale.

Option two: Weigh ins are important. Weigh ins are, in fact, everything. In the end, the ultimate arbiter of success is moving the numbers down. There's certainly a good range of healthy weights, and sure BMI's not perfect and there are bodybuilders who count as obese, but for god's sake, I'm not a bodybuilder and 278 at 5'4 is just not healthy. I'm morbidly obese. The head game, the habits, those are all nice, and they can help along the way, but they're honestly irrelevant when compared to morbid obesity. It's a trump card, it's all that matters, nothing else even counts.

I'm not sure which I believe. I know I believe in the primacy of the scale. At the end of the day, the success of any weight loss endeavor hangs on whether or not you actually drop pounds.

But still, I'm going to stop starting every post with a weigh in. I will post Tuesday weigh ins to remain accountable. (I'll still be weighing daily, keeping charts and graphing my progress, and I may occasionally share extra good news on non-Tuesdays.) I think discussing the head game, the habits, and the philosophy is more interesting. I'd rather be able to post about those without worrying about commenting on each morning's number.

Trade Offs

Weight: 258.9
BMI: 44.44

-.9 pounds day to day. 19.1 pounds total. I'm getting very close to the 20 pound mark. I don't think I've ever lost 20 pounds, so that would be a big milestone. I'm also now only 8.9 pounds away from my first goal. I'm 35 days in and have 36 days left. As of tomorrow, I'll be more than halfway in in terms of time. Even if my heart's not in it at this very moment, I'm making a ton of progress.

I think part of the cloud hanging over me is that I have a crunch time at work. I've just got a ton a ton of stuff that needs to be done soon, a lot of it by tomorrow. (Which probably means I shouldn't be blogging instead of working, but shhhhh.) And this is making me want food more.

I've always used food as a crutch to get me through the hardest parts at work and school. A pizza has always been an excellent companion for an all nighter. Even in my unhealthy days, I'd always get something special, something even unhealthier than I'd normally eat, just to get me through, like a bag of Cheetos, or soda with calories. And I'd always, always get a Starbucks venti white mocha. (At 580 calories and over $5, even I would normally only have that a treat.) But it was all okay, because it was crunch time: the time when work was more important than everything, and any standards of decency could be sacrificed on the altar of getting things done.

Well, it's crunch time. I'll see what I can do on my own, but I think I'm probably going to indulge a bit more than usual. Not, order a large pizza indulge, but something.

While I've been writing this, I keep alt tabbing to look at possible things I could consume that would be "worth it." Everything I look at I keep nixing. Not worth the weigh in, I tell myself. And even though I weigh myself every day, Tuesday's the big "official" weigh in day, the one that goes on the side of the blog. And I don't want to fuck that up.

As of now, I'll see how I can do while staying healthy. I may end up going off course if it's what's going to get my work done. As much as I don't want to, if I can't work, it might be a trade off I'm willing to make tonight.

A Rough Few Days

Weight: 259.8
BMI: 44.59

Yesterday:
Weight: 261.6
BMI: 44.90

Yesterday I went up (expected considering Friday), but today I got a very nice gift from the scale: 250s!

As the title might indicate, though, I've been having a tough time.

Dinner on Friday was bad, as predicted. I ended up not going to the gym after. I could try to blame exhaustion, but really I think it was more laziness. I avoided the pastries at breakfast on Saturday, but lunch was pretty bad. I went to the gym afterward, motivated to set things right with a long workout. Although I generally stick to the elliptical machine, on my way over I decided I'd try some new machines. First, I tried a stationary bike, figuring it would be a good idea to try considering I've been contemplating the cycling classes. I did it for 5 minutes, but everything felt wrong wrong wrong, so I hopped off. Then I decided to try one of the Precor crosstrainers. I'd loved the Precor ellipticals out in Chicago (in my last weight loss attempt slightly over a year ago) but this, just like the bike, felt all wrong. I stuck with it for 10 minutes, but then hopped off. Then I went over to the LifeFitness ellipticals, which I normally use, and got on one. It felt horrible too. Everything, just off. I stuck it out for 25 minutes, but it was just absolutely miserable. Generally, I get into the music and have at least a bit of fun while I'm working out. It's not like I'm having an excellent time yet, and there are definitely still streaks where I hate it, but generally for at least a bit of a workout I can zone out and enjoy the music. It didn't happen.

Today I hit up the gym again, doing 45 minutes on one of the LifeFitness ellipticals. While it didn't feel wrong per se, it was a terrible workout. Every minute was a battle. There were no songs I zoned out for, no adrenaline rushes, no fun parts, just badness. It was, needless to say, not a very fun workout.

I'm also having a really bad time in terms of temptation. While I haven't given in to anything yet, I am suffering through some insane cravings. I want a Five Guys little bacon burger with lettuce tomato and mayo and an order of fries. I want it badly. It feels like I've been thinking about it for so long. I had to walk by Five Guys yesterday on the way to the bank and it was all I could do not to turn in and order food. And I've been dreaming about French bread, and thinking about Chipotle burritos, and pizza, and these cheese enchiladas that this little Salvadorian restaurant by my apartment makes. Oh, and white wine and caramel frappachinos, and do you see the bad road this is going down?

My mind is in trouble. I'm not where I want to be. My head is just not in the game. And as the saying goes "90% of this game is half mental."

Still, I did all right today (and yesterday post conference) while not feeling things at all. Yes, for a portion of the day I do need to get up and get myself to the gym and work hard, but most of the rest of it is just having the fortitude to not screw up. And while I might not be truly motivated at this point, I'm not motivated enough in my desire to screw things up that I'm willing to break the status quo. Right now, weight loss is the status quo. As long as I keep on keeping on, hopefully things will be okay until I can jolt myself back to realizing just how badly I want this.

On Conferences and Free Food

Weight: 260.6
BMI: 45.73

(-.2 day to day, -17.4 overall, yada yada yada.)

One of the things I've always loved about my job is that I get to go to lots of events and conferences. Up until a month ago, "free food" was a wonderful, wonderful perk. These days, it's a bit closer to a nightmare.

For all of today, I've been at a conference. We had a continental breakfast where I was just able to grab a piece of fruit, but lunch was a sit-down, 3 course ordeal. Throughout this journey, my willpower's held relatively well, but lunch was just a disaster. I ate the whole salad, over half the lunch (of salmon, risotto, and asparagus in some unknown cream sauce), even a few bites of desert. There were pastries and other goodies provided throughout the day, but I was able to resist those relatively easily.

I wouldn't be despondent if I could, you know, just have something very light for dinner and stay within my calorie limits. But I'm not going to: I have to go to a dinner for the conference. And it's going to be a seated meal of at least three courses, lasting 90 minutes. In other words, it's going to be bad.

I've become excellent at resisting food temptations when left to my own devices. I'm even pretty good at not eating food when it's optional. But at a served meal in a social work situation, you can't really choose to just not eat. You have to eat something, to not do so would be some combination of weird and rude. Which isn't to say you have to eat the whole plate, but you have to have a decent bit.

And that's where the problem starts. I always, always, always end up eating more than I mean to at these events. It's like 90 straight minutes of sitting with food! Good, free food. That others are eating. It's badness.

So I'm probably going to overeat tonight. My gym stays open till 11, so I may try to go after dinner.

Oh, and bonus: the conference is a half day tomorrow, too. So, truncated weekend and a fattening lunch on Saturday. Oh joy. Grrr.

To train or not to train

Weight: 260.8
BMI: 44.76

The weigh in is happy (17.2 lbs lost! 6.19% of starting bodyweight and 2.95 points of BMI gone!) but not what I want to talk about today.

So, when I started losing weight, I started comparing gyms to figure out which would be a good fit for me. I sort of centered on Results because it was close and came up pretty often when I googled "Best Gym in DC." Still, at over $100 a month plus a $100 joining fee, I wasn't really certain if I was willing to spend that much.

Then, essentially the day after I'd settled on trying to go to Results for a one day free pass, I got a company wide email that we were considering a corporate membership there and that anyone who was interested should write back. I did, and I got 4 free passes to check it out.

I used them before San Diego. While I was there, the corporate membership deal got finalized. The Saturday after I got back, I went in and signed up for my reduced corporate $65 a month (and no joining fee!) membership. Since then I've used the gym every day but Monday, putting in a solid 40-60 minutes on the elliptical machine. I've been too scared to do any of the classes yet, but I'm on the edge of trying the spinning class or yoga fundamentals. They've got a Zumba class, too, which I kind of want to try solely on the basis of the praise I've read over at Learning to Be Less.

The point I'm trying to get to is that, as a new member, I'm entitled to a free personal training session. I've got mine scheduled for next Saturday (the 15th). I want to sort of dedicate the session to figuring out what I should be doing in terms of weight lifting, since I know it's important and I should be doing it, I just don't really know how. (There are also "floor trainers" whom I'm told I can ask how any of the machines work, but I'd rather just wait till the training session.)

The question is, should I invest in a personal trainer beyond the free session?

As of this point, I'm rather torn on if it's worth the money. (It would be $625 for 10 sessions, $1200 for 20. If I did get a trainer I think I'd set it up so I only met with him once a week, maybe twice.)

I recently opened up a Roth IRA for the first time. I put $3000 in, the minimum over at Vanguard where I opened my account. (Side note: if you're not saving for retirement, you should be! The younger you are the easier it is. I particularly like Roth IRA's because you can always withdraw your contributions at any time, no penalty, and can withdraw up to $10,000 in earnings for a first house or in case of hardship. You use after tax money to open the account, and then it grows tax free and you pay no taxes when you use it down the road. For more on why Roth IRAs are the awesomest awesome that ever was awesome, check out this blog post.) I'd saved up a bit particularly for this, but I did dip a bit into my general savings/emergency fund. There's a maximum contribution of $5000/year for people below the age of 50, and I'd like to put that much in before the end of the year. I think the market is cheaper than it will be for a long time, plus compounding generally favors investing as soon as you can. So, one thing I'd like to do this year is max out my retirement account.

Since the end of high school, I've always had this wild dream of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. The spring of my sophomore year in college, I took the written exam while I was studying abroad in Paris. (It's offered in tons of places in the US, too, but because I was out of the country I got to take it at the US Embassy there, which was gorgeous.) I passed it and got invited to the Oral Assessment, which I failed. And we're not talking a close failure either: I bombed. It was a mess. I hadn't been able to sleep the night before, and I just stumbled over everything and it was all kinds of terrible. I've been thinking of trying again. As part of that, I've been thinking of learning Arabic. While you don't need to know a foreign language to join, knowing a "super critical needs language" (their words, not mine) like Arabic helps a lot. So I've been thinking of taking Arabic classes. They'd be about $800 for the fall semester.

I also want to replenish my emergency fund. While I'm probably pretty secure at my job, and if anything did happen my parents would take care of me (in some future post I'll go into my parents and finances), I like having a bit of savings. I think it's important to save. And I want to get those numbers back up.

So, if I want to add personal training, it means cutting either Arabic, retirement savings, or replenishing my emergency fund. If personal training seems like it's worth it, adding to my emergency fund will probably be the thing to go: it's still got a few thousand dollars in it now, and I can build it up to a level I'm more comfortable with eventually. I'm still not 100% certain though.

So, question for anyone who's ever had a personal trainer: do you think it's worth it? What do you get from your trainer that you couldn't get on your own? How do you think s/he helps you?

And, for everyone, trainer or no, base instinct, what would you do? Pick three: trainer, Arabic, retirement, emergency fund.

A New Colleague, and New Embarrassment

So, I work in DC as a low-level economist. It's basically an entry level job, the sort of thing one has for about a year or two before moving on to grad school or something else. My office is this shared, sort of U-shaped thing--you can't see the other person unless we both roll out our chairs about 5 feet, but we can always hear each other. It's about one step up from a cubicle in terms of privacy.

Last Friday, my office-mate, easily my best friend in DC, left for another job. Her new position is in Texas: close to her family, better paying, more what she wanted to do, all around an excellent and amazing step for her. But it means this wonderful, sweet girl who I loved to bits is being replaced with a stranger. And I just found out he starts on Wednesday.

I am petrified.

One of the things that's big for me is eating in bits throughout the work day so I'm not particularly hungry at the end of the day. I'm really bad with night time eating, but I've found that having a dinner early in the evening (6:30 or 7) and then essentially closing up the kitchen works really well for me. So, on a typical work day, I'll bring:

1 banana
1 fat-free yoplait yogurt
1 chewy chocolate chip granola bar or 1 polly-o string cheese
~12 baby carrots (I guesstimate when packing in the morning and count before I eat)
1 apple or other piece of fruit (today I brought 1/2 cup of blueberries)
1 sandwich, made of: 2 pieces of light style Pepperidge Farm bread, 1 slice of cold cut (right now, I'm working on a half pound of roast beef), 1 tablespoon of miracle whip, two slices of tomato, and a bit of lettuce.

This actually only adds up to about 600 calories throughout the day. Most days I have the banana and yogurt shortly after arriving, the granola bar around 11 or so, the roast beef sandwich at 1 or 2, and snack on the fruit and baby carrots throughout the rest of the afternoon. When I go home around 5:30 or 6, I'm hungry but not ravenous, and have 600-700 calories left to make myself a relatively extravagant dinner.

There are many, many reasons I love this system. The first is, quite simply, that it works. The lack of slip ups on work days is proof of its day-to-day effectiveness. I like that it doesn't feel like deprivation: I get to pack a whole ton of food in my bag each morning, and when I get hungry at work, it's fine because I've almost always got something left to eat. When I've eaten everything, I tend to be sated--there's a lot of fiber and a lot of volume in it. I like that it leaves me enough calories to eat a big dinner. I like that when I'm hungry at night, I can tell myself "it's okay, tomorrow you'll have enough food at work and feel better" and I like that it's true. I like that on mornings when I actually am ravenous--which has happened once or twice in my 4 weeks of diet--I can actually get something that's close to a binge in terms of satisfaction by eating the sandwich, granola bar, yogurt and banana all in the morning, and that I'll still have baby carrots and another fruit to get me through the day. I can (partially) lose control, but since all the food I have is the food I've brought in with me, I don't actually mess up my diet. I like that it's healthy and delicious and feels like it has variety: there are tons of flavors of yoplait, tons of different fruits I can bring, the sandwich is different depending on which meat I use, and I even get some chocolate in the granola bar.

There are many, many things I like about my diet. Up to this point, there's been precisely one thing I've disliked: people walking in on me eating. I can almost hear them thinking, Ew, gross fat Hadley, of course she'd be eating when I stop by her office. And, for self-conscious me, that's a substantive drawback. But it's rare enough that it's only happened a few times thus far, and is easily outweighed by all the good parts. 98% of the time, the only person who could hear me eating was my dear office-mate, who was possibly the sweetest and most non-judgmental person in DC. (Yes, I know that's like saying someone's the least corrupt person in New Jersey, but I swear she'd count as nice even by normal standards.) So yeah, she could hear me eating, and while I'd still rather she didn't, I wasn't really embarrassed because it was just her.

Now, the person who's going to hear me eating is some strange boy who could easily be thinking, Ew, gross, I can hear her eating like all the friggin' time. And who could tell people, "No wonder Hadley's so fat, I can hear her eating like half the day." Scary!

So, I have until Wednesday to figure things out. I need to balance the embarrassment vs. my continued success. And I think I want to not be embarrassed about my weight in the future more than I want to not be embarrassed by eating seemingly-massive amounts right now, but right now, well, I'm just scared.

A new low and food choices

Weight: 268.2
BMI: 46.03

Wowza. 268.2! I actually feel, for the first time, like I belong in the 260s. I'm incredibly, incredibly happy with that number. It means I've now lost 9.8 pounds in total. That's 3.53% of my bodyweight and 1.68 points of BMI. And that is pretty damn awesome. I honestly was smiling all the way to work. I'm so, so happy about it.

Yesterday I did very well foodwise, albeit making one slight mistake at dinner. I had a very light breakfast and lunch, and snacked on baby carrots at work. Friends and I were going to see the new Harry Potter immediately after work (it's excellent, you should see it), and it was decided to go to Subway for a quick dinner before the movie. Yesterday afternoon I spent a good bit of time on the Subway site, pouring over the nutritional information trying to make an ideal choice. I debated between going for the extravagant 380 calorie Subway melt, going with a turkey sandwich with light mayo (280 for the sandwich plus 50 for the mayo for 330), or, what I decided would be my choice, a 290 cal mayo-less ham and turkey. I knew I wouldn't be able to enjoy a turkey sandwich with neither cheese nor mayonnaise, so I'd ruled that out early on, but I thought maybe, just maybe, having two different types of meat on the sandwich might make up for the lack of delicious, delicious cheese and condiments.

So, when we got there, I ordered the ham and turkey. And then, in that second when he asked me if I wanted any sauces, I said yeah, just a little bit of light mayo. I stopped him to make sure it was just a bit, but it was still, in the end, either 50 or 10 calories more than I really needed (depending on how you count). Lyn, over at Escape from Obesity, had this great post about how you need just a split second of determination to do the right thing. And where she passed her test, I failed mine.

But the damage wasn't bad, I was still under my limit for the day, and I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I did the right thing for the rest of the night, refusing the many offers from my friends to have a few pieces of candy or a handful of popcorn. I did, overall, a really great job resisting temptation last night.

As I write this, I'm about an hour away from going out to a colleague's going away lunch. It will be challenging, to say the least. We're going to this pizza place called Ella's, which of course has no calorie stuff listed online. I've spent probably more time looking at the menu then I'd like to confess, and still haven't decided what I'm going to get. I know it might sound crazy to those of you who are used to being healthy, but I really don't want to call attention to the fact that I'm on a diet just yet, especially not to my colleagues. I know, I know, telling people is great and will help build you a support system and you'll be less likely to fall back and whatever else, but I'm honestly just still too embarrassed to at this point. I think ordering a salad would do just that, so I don't think I'm going to do so.

So, pizza it will be. The question between plain and veggie is up in the air. Plain pizza is my standard, and it's my favorite. Getting one of the varieties with vegetables on it�of those options I've been leaning towards wild mushroom�would be healthier and get more nutrients in. I'd also like it substantially less, and thus probably eat less of it. On the other hand, if I'm going out spending money and calories on pizza, it seems kind of silly to not get pizza I'd like. I'm not saying I should go crazy and order the four cheese one, or eat the whole thing, but �

I don't know. I'm possibly making excuses. I'm going to have a tough night (and a tough weekend) in terms of food since my parents are going to be here. I think I'll be able to at least somewhat minimize my food exposure by telling them I have lots of work, but there's no way around the fact that I'm simply going to be eating more than I've been eating since this diet began.

I know, I know, this is why you should tell people. I just don't quite feel ready to.

The worst part about this may be that I'm so damn close to 268, and with that the accomplishment of having dropped a full 10 pounds. It would be a big achievement, and I want to get there. Since at this point I'm just hoping not to gain up to the 270s while they're here, it's going to be tricky.

Hopefully I'll be strong, and even if I can't hit 268 this weekend, I'll hit it next week. And then, hopefully, I'll be able to not gain massive amounts of weight in San Diego.

It could happen, right?

I've got a long, long road ahead.