To weigh or not to weigh…

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A very weighty question (pun maybe intended, maybe not, I haven’t decided yet)…

My friend Melynda recently posted on her blog about some lifestyle changes she’s making now that her new baby has arrived.

One of the big changes is that she’s not going to weigh herself anymore. She said she was weighing herself daily, but that she has decided that she needs to stop.

To weigh or not to weigh is a big decision…I’ve looked at (and lived) the pros and cons of both…regular weighing – daily, weekly, monthly, whatever – is definitely a motivator and can be very helpful. I have also experienced how it can work in the opposite way. I happen to think (right now) that not weighing yourself can be great, especially for your self esteem, but that it also doesn’t necessarily help if you’re not aware of your body.

I don’t weigh myself very often. I never used to weigh myself at all, but then we moved. And the people who used to live in our house left their scale behind. Even when I was pregnant, I didn’t weigh myself. Because of my back, I had prenatal check ups at least every two weeks, so my doctor weighed me. But after J was born there was a scale in our bathroom. And I started weighing myself. I weighed myself once a week on the same day that J had her weigh ins.

It was great until the domperidone started. And then I began to dread the scale. The needle didn’t move. And when you’re three months postpartum and the needle stops moving before you fit into your pre-pregnancy clothes, it’s not a happy thing.

So I’ve stopped. Almost a year ago I decided it wasn’t helping me at all. It was making it worse. (Take a look at Single Dad Laughing’s post on bathroom scales and his list of steps. It was something like that for me except I didn’t usually do the two to three day junk food binge and I was a lot harder on myself)

Now, I have two guides – one is how I’m feeling – am I dragging myself around or do I have energy. The other is how my clothes fit. Waistbands are getting looser and that means that things are changing in my body. And that’s good. But I’m not stepping on that scale until it’s time to wear a different size and retire all my pants.

Because my weight fluctuates. With the time of day, the day of the week, the week of the month, the colour of my socks. And those fluctuations can really drag me down.

And I’ve decided the fluctuations stress me out and that just makes the extra pounds more determined to stick to me.

Do you weigh yourself regularly or not at all? How did you decide what the best scale plan was for you?