My wife has one of those thermometers that you are supposed to use on your forehead to tell your body temperature. I can teach someone how to fix an aircraft engine, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to use this little one button device. The trick of it is in the technique of when and how you run it across your forehead and apparently it is an art form that I have not mastered yet. What that makes me laugh about this gadget and using it is that whenever she tries to take the kids temperature, she keeps using the thing over and over again until she get the temperature she is looking for. "98.1, 98.6, 100.1. See, I told you she had a fever!"
Today, I found myself using the same technique when I got on the scale. After a week of controlling what I ate and managing my calories, it would surely result in some loss of weight, right? Unfortunately, when I stepped on the scale this morning, my weight stayed relatively the same as it did when I got on a week ago. I couldn't believe it so I got off the scale, moved the scale, and changed by body position on it several times. I kept doing this because I was trying to get the answer I was looking for. I wanted to get the reward of losing a few pounds after all of the hard work I put into eating correctly for the past seven days. I was counting on it.
Unfortunately, today it was not meant to be. My weight is the same as last week no matter where I placed the scale or stood on it. So while I was standing on the scale today, wavering my body back and forth, it really got me thinking; "Was I using the appropriate measurement?" I just completed a week of eating less that 2,000 calories a day and because there was no loss of weight, I initially looked at the past week as a failure. How could I think such a thing? After all, were the efforts I made this week about losing weight or were they about controlling my emotional eating and developing better eating habits?
There is no question that I am overweight. It is important for me to have weight loss goals so that I can get out of the morbidly obese category on the BMI chart. To lose weight, I know that I have to eat right and exercise. So it is natural to think that my eating habits are directly tied into these weight loss goals because losing weight is normally a by-product of eating correctly. But that is just it. Losing weight is a by-product of eating correctly, not the measurement we use to determine if we are achieving our goals.
In marching band, our students have several simultaneous responsibilities that must perform in their normal routine. One is the distance they must travel from set to set and one is the tempo they must maintain in their feet. When the tempos get faster, then tendency is for their steps to get bigger. But the tempo in their feet and the distance that they travel in their sets are two different things. So we ask them: "What is the relationship between the tempo you are marching and the distance you are covering in the set?" The answer is: NOTHING!
Life Lesson: Sometimes the relationship between two things you are trying to accomplish at the same time is nothing.
Controlling my emotional eating and losing weight are both goals of mine, but these goals are not related to each other. I have to keep these goals separate and I have to focus on each of them independently if I want to achieve success in both.
Losing weight is a by-product of better eating habits. This is something I need to take advantage of when it comes to my weight loss goals. Having better eating habits alone is not going to help me achieve my weight loss goals, just like losing weight is not the measurement that is going to help me achieve my goals of controlling my emotional eating.
Today was a great victory for me in my journey to overcome my emotional eating habits. I successfully maintained a near 2000 calorie a day diet for a week and had very rare occasions where I ate something unconsciously or out of nervous habit. Big steps in the right direction despite the fact that I did not lose a single pound.
Of course, now I need to also bring into focus the fact that I do have weight loss goals and I need to take additional steps to bring me closer to achieving those goals. This is likely by bringing regular exercise into the fold.
So, I have two goals; one that is focused on controlling my emotional eating and one that is focused on losing weight. From this point forward, I must remember to use the right measurements for each of my goals so I can independently monitor their progress correctly and successfully accomplish them both.
I have to admit to the stepping on the scale several times, moving it, etc. in an attempt to get it to show me a different result. And I weigh myself first thing in the morning, partly because it is the most consistent time, but also partly because I know that is when it will be lowest. :) Rightly or wrongly, I weigh myself every morning. In doing so, I have seen some very unusual results. Some days I don't do so well and the next morning I am down, and other days when I am good, the scales are up. I look at it like the stock market. I check it daily, but don't really pay much attention until the trend is one way or another. Keep it up. You are on the right track. Results WILL come.
ReplyDeleteI do the same thing—multiple weighs, move scale and early morning weigh to get the lowest possible number. I guess for me it is an emotional thing. I need the positive feeling that I have accomplished something. But, to the author's point, just eating less every day for a week is an accomplishment. In business terms, measuring my calorie intake is a leading indicator. My resulting weight is a lagging indicator. The lagging indicator WILL show-up, but it is more a result of me accomplishing my goals than anything else.
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