Measuring Mania

I weigh myself first thing in the morning every single morning. Alarm, bathroom break, strip, scale. That's the routine. Has been since January 2001, when I had my first "get serious" moment. From my weight log you can see that I've taken breaks here and there (vacations, broken leg, just not writing the number down, etc), but daily weigh-ins and watching the weighted average of those weigh-ins is an essential feedback mechanism in my daily life.

Whenever possible I measure every bite of food I eat. I also log my food intake every single day (nearly) without fail. I have done those two since January 2004 when I had one of my "get serious" moments and took my weight-loss-game up to the next level. Actually, I took a small break from measuring and logging during the holidays of 2004, but I also gained 5 pounds. Negative case proves the positive, right? :)

I don't weigh myself only if I don't have access to my home scale in the morning at my designated weighing time. I don't log my food only on very special occasions, like long vacations out of the country or something. Actually I've been known to log food on paper even during vacations, then go back and fill in the data later in my fitday.com account. I do my very best to guess (or look up) the ingredients of food I've eaten that turns out to not be in the fitday food database.

Measuring food. This is the trickier one. Anytime I'm eating food away from home, like at a restaurant or the cafeteria at work, I'm at the mercy of my estimating abilities. Luckily I've gotten very very good at estimating food volumes. I try to double-check my estimates, for example by going home and measuring all parts of the half of a restaurant meal I've brought home in a doggie bag. When eating at the work cafeteria, where all food is free (what a mixed blessing that is), I try very hard to slightly low-ball my portions of calorie dense foods. Take the smallest muffin in the basket, a scant bowl of cereal, a tiny cookie, etc. I'm wondering, though, if my estimation ability is starting to slip.

Tonight my dinner was some whole wheat pita, hummus, and broccoli. I measured the hummus with a tablespoon onto my plate: 1, 2, 3, 4. I counted the broccoli flowerets. I actually input the meal into fitday before I even started plating it up, to make sure it fit into my nutritional plan for the day. This doesn't seem strange to me anymore, in fact NOT doing it would feel strange. But I also am very aware that other people don't do this. Don't need to do this.

Yes, this all seems a bit extreme and obsessive. I like to think that part of the rigor is my scientific mind: the FitDay reporting mechanism and weight chart averaging aren't worth squat without complete, accurate data. Part of it, though, is a real acknowledgment that if I were to stop all these behaviors and just "live life like a normal person," I'd backslide on my weight and fitness and health. I've worked far too hard to let that happen.

Theoretically, at some nebulous future time, all of these behaviors that I'm forcing on myself will truly be habits and second nature and I won't need these feedback mechanisms to keep me exercising every day and eating well and not gaining fat. I've already truly changed many behaviors, like how big I think a meal should be. Then again, there are lots of reasons for me to believe, or at least accept as a real possibility, that such a future is quite impossible. It's far better for me to just assume that I'll always weigh myself regularly and I'll always think very consciously about what I'm eating, at the very least.

The scale is my most important and vital feedback mechanism, and I don't care what the "don't weigh yourself, it only makes you feel bad" nay-sayers say. I know from experience. When I was gaining weight back over the holidays last year I didn't need the scale to tell me that. I knew it from looking at my body and feeling my clothes. Even 5 pounds is quite noticeable if you are paying attention. But did I change my overeating, non-exercising behavior? No. Nor did I stop weighing myself, however. And when the scale hit the "trigger weight" I had set for myself, then and only then did I snap out of it and get back on that horse and lose those pounds. It's all about understanding your own psychology, then setting traps for all those bad behaviors.

Speaking of bad behaviors, one of mine is staying up too late and being too tired to work out the next morning. Time for bed!