Today is weighing day, and I do that every Saturday. That is the plan. Some people weigh daily. (Mr. Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood weighed himself every day. So did my one grandfather.) I find once per week is generally enough. It shows that the work I did during the rest of the week – counting calories and portioning – was true and accurate, or at least reasonably true and accurate. This week, I did weigh myself every day in the morning, just because it has been a while since I have seen my weight go down.
Good news! My weight this morning was 243.6 pounds.
Since I weighed myself several times this week, my only real question going on to the scale this morning was: exactly how much would I have lost? I knew I had lost more than two pounds from last week’s 246 pounds. That’s unusual that I know I have lost weight and have a good idea how much – most of the time I get on the scale 7 days from the last time and I never know for sure what’s going to happen.
Also, I normally make more of a bigger deal out of it if my weight is lower than my previous total, but I know that right now, my weight is higher than my lowest ever. My lowest ever weight was 237.4 pounds. So I am happy because it looks like my weight is under control again, but not quite happy all the way, since I will spend February getting back to my lowest ever. Still, this is very positive news: I am capable of continuing my weight control system.
Responsibility and relief
In January, while I was agonizing about how to restart the weight control system (I stopped doing it in early December), it was tempting to blame my inability on outside issues: it was winter outside! Genetically, I was predisposed to gaining weight to last through the winter! The days were shorter! Eating more was a natural reaction to the stresses of winter cold and darkness!
Ultimately, those were not satisfying explanations. Being on a weight control system, losing weight, and maintaining weight, are difficult. It is doable but you have to accept it is a values question, rather than an impersonal one. If you do all the things that dieting people do, you still won’t lose weight over the long term, because you have to force yourself to maintain those behaviors. Your old values are waiting for you and you will fall back into them the second you stop applying force. You must adopt new values and one of the top values in your life has to be: I will be in control of my weight.
I’ve talked before about what living out that value means in many different contexts. But part of my success has been to recognize that I can’t force or order my body to do the dieting for me. (Eat less! Go on a budget! Stop smoking/drinking etc! It never works.) That’s another form of pushing off the responsibility to someone “else”. If my conscious mind wants this and values it, then my conscious mind has to put in the work: all the planning, shopping, cooking, portioning, and balancing I do, is done using the time and energy of my life, and limited amount of consciousness, which takes a lot of effort and discipline. So I try hard to make it worth my while. That’s a good trade.
(I think this is why so many diets work for so many people, at least in the short or middle term. All the mechanisms work because our bodies work the same way. The difference is what’s in your mind.)
It’s the same for anything in your life. If you want it, you have to act it out in your life as if it’s the only thing that matters.
-The Doctor