Scale rehab underway

If you read my last post, you know my scale hasn't been sent to detox from it's #1 weigher. Rather, its #1 weigher is on day 3 of abstinence from weighing myself everyday. And so far, it's going okay. I haven't scratched anyone's eyes out, kicked the dog or even screamed at the husband in my acute withdrawal phase. Maybe I'm on what they call in AA a "pink cloud". One thing for sure, I already recognize that this scale avoidance is the right thing for me, and yielding small but important rewards. And before I go on, I just want to note that I have not been getting on the scale more than once every morning, though years ago I did weigh multiple times a day. But even once a day have proven detrimental to my weightloss efforts.

Here's what the pattern has been for the last 6 or 7 weeks - maybe longer. I'd hop on the scale every morning. If my weight was up a few pounds from previous day's indiscretions, then I had no problem staying on the straight and narrow with my eating for a day or two. By no longer than the morning of day 2 of clean eating, the scale would inevitably be back down those couple pounds, and IN MY HEAD I'd be all inspired and plan to blast on down that scale, baby! But that plan, my friends, was/is bullsh*t, because almost immediately after stepping off the scale and sailing into the 12 millionth "first day of the rest of my life", I'd start thinking about binge foods. Just thinking...but over the course of the day, that thoughts crescendoed into full obsession, and then it was a matter of time (minutes? hours?) before I'd take one small handful of something, or a 1 ounce piece of decadent cheddar, and off to the races I'd go. So essentially every other day for 2 weeks, and maybe every 2nd day for the previous 4 or 5 weeks, I've been greatly overeating, and often bingeing, at night. Big shock that my weightloss has stalled in the 197-200 pound wasteland (waistland? haha).

I've just complete 2 full days of clean eating without bingeing. I haven't had 2 consecutive clean days in at least 2 weeks due to the mini-yoyoing every other day. But by not getting on the scale yesterday morning to see if, or that, I'd dropped the few gained pounds, I didn't feel okay about tying on the feedbag after dinner. In fact, I had no desire to eat after dinner last night or the night before.

The thought of going cold turkey on the scale (at least for awhile) was planted by Friend of the Bear just 2 days ago, and when I contemplated it, I felt anxious and scared. Like flying on a trapeze without a net. What if??????????? How can I lose weight and maintain loss without daily weighing? Bearfriend sent me an email with the cleverest notion. Knowing I'm in AA, she noted that I didn't need a daily breathalizer to stop drinking or remind me that I was sober. Similar, a scale isn't necessary to lose weight. Like a breathalizer, it's just an external monitoring of behavior! How brilliant is that??? The behavior is what counts, not the numbers on an external device.

So far, so good. I don't know how long I'll go without weighing, but hopefully I can make it to Friday, when I would normally weigh in to track progress on my goal of 190 by November 2nd. But I'd like to postpone it even then. I can't make any promises, but I know that if I eat properly and continue exercising, the WEIGHT WILL COME OFF. This has to be the only way I'm going to take the leap of faith off that plateau on which I've been camped out for so long. My way sure wasn't working.