Foolish Games

Not that I don't already have enough weight issues to tackle, I'm dangerously flirting with becoming a slave to the scale. I have a cheap bathroom scale that I know is typically about 3 lbs. lower than the scale at the doctor's offices that I go to, so I weigh myself everyday just to get an idea of if my weight is changing or not. I'm ashamed to admit that there are days when I weigh myself 3 times a day just to see how much the time of day affects my numbers. Of course there's also the weighing myself before and after exercise too to see if I really have burned off the calories that the treadmill says that I have. If that's the case though I would probably need a scale that rounded off with about 10 decimal places!

My insurance company required a 6 month medically supervised diet so I've been making changes in my diet over these last months which is great, but there's something about seeing the numbers on the scale go down that is just fantastic!

Last month, I hit some peak moments of stress at work and was mortified with myself that I reverted back to my old fashioned binging behavior to deal with my emotions. Then, I stepped on the scale and saw a 3 lb. gain from where I had been a week earlier and was emotionally destroyed. Will I ever get a handle on this whole emotional eating thing? How will I ever maintain my weight if it's just that easy and that fast to gain 3 lbs.!! I weighed myself a few days later at the doctor's office though and found that not only were those 3 lbs. gone but they took an additional pound and a half with them. All was well with the world.

This last week, I saw my weight go up again about 3 lbs. again in just a week. I admit that I'd eaten some things that I shouldn't have and hadn't been doing very well at fighting my cravings for french fries and hot fudge sundaes. My initial thought was here we go again....I'm a failure. I'll never get a handle on this. Then, like a bolt of lightening, I had an Oprah Ah-ha moment and realized that duhhh....I'm simply pms-ing!! I forget that I have a very unusual cycle and it's often difficult to tell if I'm even having a period or not! Before starting this newest attempt to lose weight, I always craved sugar, salt, and chocolate during the appointed time and always from separate sources. Have you ever garnished a hot fudge sundae with potato chips? Mmmm, it will take you from bitch to gentle lamb in 60 seconds.

I realized that the 3 lb. change that I was seeing on the scale has always been there but I just hadn't been weighing myself over the years to see the difference. When I stepped onto the scale this morning, poof, my 3 lbs. had disappeared once again and again life remains worth living.

I've been learning things about my body and how my weight works over the last several months, but I do have to be careful of the lure of the scale and the foolish games that it plays. The scary part is that I can indulge in my pms cravings and see the scale go up, but just as easily see it go back down in just a few days. It's as if the calories I took in didn't even have an effect on my weight. I initially thought that those indulgences were causing the 3 lb. gain but knowing that they don't account for the difference is a dangerous game because the mind wants to say, sure, you can get away with eating this junk because it really doesn't make a difference. Unfortunately it's that type of thinking that has brought me to the point in my overall weight gain of where I am now. I'll have to focus on fooling myself into realizing that those calories do count even if I don't see a real change on the scale immediately.

I know that the pms cravings will most likely NOT go away after surgery, but I hope that I can find some simple alternatives to meet them and beat them. In the meantime, the cravings are gone and my stomach felt so awful after eating the junk food that I wanted to shoot myself for even going there! I can't say that I will lose my obsession with the scale anytime soon because I know that after I'm rearranged from the rooter to the tooter I'll be fascinated with watching the numbers fall, but....keeping in mind that plateaus do happen, it might be a good thing to surrender to the scale on some sort of a regular basis just to keep myself on track. Three times a day is way too much, but once or twice a week may not be too bad. From now on, I will know that "fat week" exists, but I'll use it as a reminder of what I know to be true.....if I continue to eat garbage, I will see garbage on the scale. That once a month reminder will hopefully be a reminder enough of where I've come from and I can hopefully focus on where I'm going to.