Psych of weigh-in day and the “cat drop metric”

Today is “weigh-in day” and so there is some need for psychology.  So just a word on how that tends to go.

Many folks working on weight loss are familiar with the basics here:

1. Your weight fluctuates — it can actually bounce around as much as five or so pounds from day to day.  So the usual advice is: don’t weigh yourself all the time and get highly reactive to the results, because it’s easy to get discouraged if, say, you weigh the same or even more today than yesterday.  (Especially if you’ve worked your buns off and missed a favorite dessert last night in hopes of a big change today.) (Also, don’t weigh yourself on Monday morning, unless you spend weekends at Camp Lejune or in a monastery living on broth.)

2. If you’re doing a lot of exercise, you’ll probably be adding muscle, and muscle weighs lots more than fat.  So while you’re actually losing fat and replacing it with muscle, which is a much more efficient tissue for weight maintenance (muscle needs more energy to live; fat is basically storage and hardly needs any), you may be disappointed by the scale’s results.

This is all state of the art science and also common sense.  Still… it’s kind of disappointing, isn’t it?  Because for those of us who are chronically tormented by our weight, we still would feel better if the scale said “LESS!!!” every day.