The Scale Project

Those of you who know me well know that I can be a little obsessive about my weight.  Okay…maybe the word “little” is a bit of an understatement.  I pretty much have a love/hate/hate/hate relationship with my scale on a daily basis, so I should probably just come right out and admit that I obsess over the number I see on the scale.  For those of you who didn’t know that, I’m sorry I shattered your image of me. 

In the past two to three years, I mostly had success with the number on the scale moving down.  It took me a while, but I finally adjusted my brain to shopping for clothing in sizes I had not worn since middle school.  I started feeling more confident and became aware of my health.  My energy was up along with my activity level.  But even with running on a regular basis, I began to notice my weight had crept up last January, so I added a weight loss app to my iPhone.  I could track my daily calories to help me hit my goal weight.  Up until this point, I had only weighed once a week, but this new program had a place for me to record my daily weight.  Now it has become a habit for me to weigh every day.  

I’m tired of it.

A year later, this January, I started strength training to help increase my speed as a runner.  Since then, I have steadily watched the number on the scale creep up.  Seeing this on a daily basis – the ups and downs (but mostly ups) – is really starting to do a number on my attitude even though I know in my head (and from the constant reminders of those close to me) that it’s the addition of the muscle.

Enter:   The Scale Project

To combat this negative feeling and to get my mind off the constant calorie counting, I am instituting a “no weigh-in” policy for this week only.  I weighed on Monday morning -because I had a doctor’s appointment anyway, and I do want to make sure my scale is still calibrated right- but I am not going to weigh or count calories for a whole week.  This may sound silly or uneventful, but to me it's a big deal. 

Someday, maybe I’ll have the courage to completely throw my scale out, but for now I just want to make it through the week.  I’ll report next week how I fared.