No Weigh

On Friday, September 7, 2012, I started the 30 day challenge, "No Weigh." This will be the first time in my adult life I will go longer than a week without weighing myself. I am up for the challenge, are you?

How often do you typically weigh in? Once a day? Once a week? More? Less? Does it affect the kind of day you experience? For example, if you lose a pound or two, are you happy and feel you look great? What if you gain a few pounds? Does it affect your mood making you perhaps irritable or depressed? I started thinking about how weighing myself daily affects my life.  I am an average person, but my weight tends to go down a few pounds, then back up a few pounds, but really never moving more than five pounds in either direction. On the days my weight is down, I notice I have more self confidence, which makes me want to go out to do more things and be around more people. However, on the days I am up a few, I experience self-loathing thoughts and I am generally more negative.

I started thinking about other ways my weight might affect my life, once I realized I let the scale dictate my mood. If I let the scale determine my self-worth and self-confidence, then how does that affect my performance at work? Will I be my best? I also thought about who else might it may affect, like my friends, family and spouse. I realized it has affected all of the above indirectly. When I let the scale tell me "you are not good enough" then I may take it out on my friends and family because they are the people closest to me. 

I asked myself the other day, "If I continue along my current path (weighing myself daily), then what would the immediate future look like? What would it look like in a month? A year? Five years?" My answer was, "exactly where I am today, but not where I want to be." I want to be free of the scale, healthy, free of illness, fit, full of energy and a healthy role model to others, especially my future kids. Then I decided to put the scale away, at least for 30 days. Will you join me on the challenge?