Hi, Dr. Jack,
I just wanted to tell you that I bought a new scale. It is one of the Tanita ones you talked about. It should be arriving in a week. Sure has a lot of information on it. Things are going well…. scale is up…
Chris,
You are going to have to trust me on this. This is normal. There are so many variables and you can’t allow the weight loss cycle get you discouraged. Rarely, and I mean rarely, does anyone not go through this. It’s like the stock market. There are fluctuations, ups and downs, but ultimately you are looking for the trend of going up. Here, we are looking for the trend of going down. This is NOT a sprint. It’s a marathon. This is a lifestyle change that will take time. Two days of cycling is nothing when we are talking a full year to reach your goal. Keep your chin up. We’ll talk this afternoon.
Dr. Jack
One of the things Dr. Jack recommended to me was to get a good scale. I never thought much about it at the time, but long term I see why you need it. Weight is one number. Doesn’t tell you much when you think about it. It tells you that you gained or lost. But it is not taking into account daily fluctuations. Maybe the soup I made had a little too much salt. Maybe I didn’t drink enough yesterday. At first, I didn’t see what this new scale would do, but long term? Once again, Dr. Jack knows his business.
After the scale came, I spent a lot of time reading it and trying to figure it all out. It actually gave something like eight readings. I copied the chart that came with it and got on. That was depressing on the first day, but if you use it once a week and copy the results down, you start to see trends. And sometimes those trends help you to feel good about the number that is NOT moving.
I learned that weight loss comes in cycles, and that on the weeks where I don’t lose much, I do notice that other numbers change. So my eating pattern stays similar each week with a few variations, and my weight stays in the same range with little loss. But! when I look at all the numbers I see that my muscle mass went UP four pounds and I still lost two so that is something GREAT!!! I also watch my bone mass as I am not as young as I used to be so is that number staying consistent.
Then there is the visceral fat number which Dr. Jack told me is the fat around your organs…. ewwwwww…… and I watch that number too. Mine has a very consistent pattern of going down and is almost predictable. I try to remind myself, that even if the scale only shows a little drop in weight, there is a lot that is going on inside, and that part will help me long term.
When I use it and I don’t understand what the number means, I look it up and try to figure out what it is and why it is important. Or I ask Dr. Jack and he explains it to me. He clued me into looking at weight as a daily snapshot of a moment. But he also explained to me that he looks for trends, is your weight going down most of the time? You can’t judge how you are doing from day to day. For awhile I was making myself so crazy with that number, that he told me to stop getting on the scale. Now, I can but I had to make my head understand. Day to day is one thing, but it is better sometimes to just wait a few days, get on and see how things have gone. Have I had weeks where it seemed to go up? YES!!! And I didn’t even cheat so I felt bad, but after he explained it to me, I started monitoring the numbers more closely. I see weight up, but so do I see muscle mass up, which is awesome.
What I have learned is not to get crazy when the weight isn’t moving as fast as I want it to. You can control what you eat, what you drink and how much sleep you can get in. You can’t control the inner workings of your body. All you can do is give it what it needs, eat well, take the necessary supplements, and let it do the rest. So the investment in that scale? SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO worth it!!!!