For over two years now, I have been trying to lose weight. And I have been successful. I have lost lots of weight. Over 12 stone gone and well on the way to reaching my target weight. I have gone from a size xxxxl to size medium and I have embraced physical activity.
I should be delighted. And in many ways I am. I am fitter and happier than I have ever been.
However, in my pursuit of weight loss, I have developed an obsession. I have scales at home and it is a great set of scales. I love my scales. No, I really love my scales. There is not a day goes by that I don’t pay it a visit. Some days I even say hello more than once. I track my morning weight, my evening weight and even my post exercise and eating weights. I love analysing the fluctuating readings. I live to see the readings drop.
I hate my scales. Somedays I am heavier than the day before. Somedays I eat clean and exercise lots and the scales don’t even move. Somedays it even registers a 2 or 3 lb gain only to see it disappear two days later, but not before it has left me deflated. Rather than being a useful tool to monitor my progress, it has became the barometer of my state of mind and it dictates my behaviours (which are normally eat less and do more). I know this and still I cannot resist stepping onto it.
And, in my pursuit of weightloss, I have taken my eye off the prize. I hated and hate being fat. Despite being relatively fit, I still look in the mirror naked and see fat. When I am doing star jumps, push ups and and mountain climbers, I am painfully aware of the fat that hangs dripping from my body. I want to lose this fat. So why do I measure my weight loss when in actual fact I should be measuring my fat loss? By focusing on weight loss, I am negelecting the need to maintain (and increase) lean tissue.
When I first started I weighed 354 lbs and had 185 lbs of fat and 169 lbs of lean tissue. Now, weighing in at 181 lbs I have 36 lbs of fat and 145 lbs of lean tissue.
In my pursuit of weightloss, I love potentially lost 24 lbs of fat burning lean tissue. This may seem a reasonable sacrifice as I am no longer having to carry and move a substantially heavier body, but this video below reminded me of the importance of focusing on the fat.
So, starting from today, I am am going to change my focus. My weight is no longer the metric that will dictate my life or be the measure of my success. From today, I am going to focus on fat loss and use scales (and not even my scales) to measure my body fat percentage.
And from today, I am going to end my need to constantly weigh myself. I will weigh in once a week using the scales at Forward Fitness where my good friend Elle will also measure the centremetres lost, another better way of measuring progress than scales alone.