What gets measured gets managed
Back when I was fit and healthy, I didn’t see a need to weigh myself every day. Why should I own a pair of weighing scales if I eat well enough and do sufficient exercise to keep my weight in check, I thought. Well, that was a long time ago and things have changed since then. I now weigh 202lbs. For the last couple of years I have not been exercising, I have been eating poorly, and now I am on the verge of being diagnosed with high blood pressure. I decided a couple of weeks ago that something had to change, which prompted me to write Zugspitze, an article about how fed up I have become with how my health has steadily declined. Since writing that article I have lost around 5lbs. Not much, but it’s a start. Central to my weight loss journey is the idea that I must weigh myself every single day. Without fail. The most obvious reason for this is that it allows me to see my progress over time. There are other not so obvious reasons for it as well.
By committing to weighing myself every day, I am establishing a good habit, one that can serve as a kind of litmus test for how I am feeling that day. If I get out of bed and think “I can’t be bothered to weigh myself today” then I know that something has gone wrong, and that I should dig into what is causing me to feel that way. I perform that analysis after I have weighed myself. I weigh myself even if I don’t want to. Because I know that future self will thank me. There are exceptions to this rule, for example when I am not at home. If I don’t have access to my weighing scales then I skip a day, but I remain aware of how my travel plans are impacting my weight loss goals.
Once I established this foundation of weighing myself every day, I noticed that a sense of accountability arose. Finally I have someone to answer to. Someone who is brutally honest and who is going to tell me when I am eating too much junk food, or that I’m not exercising enough. In a world where it has practically become a hate crime to talk openly about larger-than-average people. God forbid you suggest that they might be healthier if they lost some weight. The scales don’t lie. That is refreshing.
My next realization was that accountability comes with responsibility. Knowing that I am going to weigh myself every day forces me to make better choices like eating a healthier meal, going for a run on my lunch break, or even lifting some weights in the evening. Because I have begun to care about whether or not the numbers go up or down, I am compelled to take action to make sure the numbers are going in the right direction at a rate that aligns with my goals and is pleasing to me.
When my weight loss line is tracking my goal line, I feel empowered. I feel like my actions in this world matter. I feel in control of my own destiny, in a world that insists on thrusting its chaos upon us at every opportunity. Sometimes my weight loss line exceeds expectations and that’s even better still! Other times, I find myself underperforming, and that brings me back down to reality again. This cycle of positivity and negativity is a necessary part of the weight loss process. It causes me to continually evaluate my weight loss strategy and make improvements along the way. This empowerment reduces the overall feeling of chaos and reassures me that I am not just a pawn in my life.
The weight loss process is very much a case of trial-and-error. When you start the process there are things you don’t know, but over time you build up experience of what works for you and what doesn’t. But you will only be able to identify these things if you are consistently measuring your weights and being candid about what is going on in your life right now. I will end with a quote I heard some time ago. “What gets measured gets managed”. The true origins of this phrase seem to be unknown to the internet, but there is a lot of debate online about its meaning. To me, it means that you should measure the things that are truly important to you. By measuring my weight and uploading the results to a spreadsheet every day, I have managed to stay focused on my weight loss journey. I have kept cravings at bay, I have exercised, and I have started making better choices in my life. The scales don’t lie.