Posted on September 18, 2017 by Kate Halsall
Ok so you read the question “how do you measure your weight” and your answer is “scales obviously” – but that’s not entirely the right answer is it? How many times a week or even a day do you weigh yourself? Is it always on the same set of scales? You see before and after pictures all over social media – they are also representations of weight loss and measurements of such. How do your clothes fit? If they’re feeling looser (or tighter), is that not a measurement of weight also? So you see, how do you measure your weight, is a much broader question than you initially think.
Photographs
I have to say here, hats off to ANYONE who takes before and after pictures of themselves and post them onto a public forum – it takes guts! All I could think about when I took the pictures below is “seriously the amount of potential criticism it opens you up too” – it made me so self conscious and nervous – so don’t think for a second those pictures are easy to take and post! So this is one way I personally have been tracking my weight – do you do this? These are pictures of me. The first is on 10th of July when I weighed 11st 13.6lb <sad face>. The second is this morning when I weighed in at 11st 3.2lb <happier face>. What a difference 10lbs makes! Until now, no one else has seen this, and too be honest some people won’t have noticed the weight loss at all – but I notice and that’s all that counts (afterall I’m loosing weight for me not anyone else). Pictures are a great way to monitor progress.
Scales
As personal trainers we try and educate our clients on the perils of weighing themselves more than once a week or on different scales, so we try and take this responsibility onto ourselves. Your weight can honestly fluctuate between 2 – 4lbs (even up to 6lbs) a day! To prove it, this week I have weighed myself every day and at different times :
- Monday @ 11:30am = 11st 7lb
- Monday @12:45 = 11st 9.4lb (wow that soup I had at lunch must have been hefty!)
- Tuesday @ 6am = 11st 5.6lb (good grief what happened over night?)
- Tuesday @6pm = 11st 7lb
- Wednesday @ 6am =11st 3.2lb (I think Wednesday’s may be my new weigh in days!)
- Wednesday @ 3pm = 11st 5.4lb
- Thursday @5:45am = 11st 7.2lb (good grief what was my evening meal!)
You get the idea! I guess if you get on those scales too many times, how do you actually know what you weigh?!
Clothes
How do your clothes fit? When your clothes feel better on you not only does it make you happier, but you know your weight is doing ok! I love it when there’s more room in my clothes!
Inches
Inches tie in with your clothes fitting, and often tell more of a story then just the weight on the scales. We’ve had clients who have lost the equivalent of a 7foot person in inches! Wow…..can you imagine the impact this has had on their life? How they look? The clothes they wear?
In summary – we will all have different ways to measure our weight. Of course there are healthy and unhealthy weights to be and so we do need to be mindful of it. If you are looking for weight loss – or gain for that matter, you do have to find a way to track it. You don’t have to put it on social media, you don’t have to weigh yourself every day, you just need to track it….whatever works best for you. Rather than obsessing over it, a large part of “weight” simply boils down to how YOU FEEL about your body.