Fitness

Better Ways to Watch Your Weight Without Using a Scale

Times of India

No matter how ambitious your fitness goals or how strict your regimen, losing weight is a big challenge. In spite of your best intentions, it is easy to become discouraged when you do not see results. You may adhere to a fitness routine or diet and still find that you are not getting close to the weight that you desire.

Australian personal trainer Tiffiny Hall, who appeared on The Biggest Loser Australia, gives a reminder that you can measure your progress in other ways than your weight.

In fact, obsessing on how much weight you are losing (or not losing) can be damaging to your sense of self-worth. It can make you feel anxious and lower your confidence if you do not get the results you are hoping for.

Hall notes how the habit of focusing on our weight stems from our childhood, as weighing was something many of us witnessed adults do when we were children. It is also something that is continuously pushed on us by the health industry.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to drop to a healthy weight, but overzealous monitoring of your weight is not the healthiest way to go about it.

Many factors affect your weight and cause it to fluctuate. Water retention, gaining muscle, and your monthly period may cause you to put on weight or keep it the same, even when you are already putting in the hard work on your journey to weight loss. When this happens, you might end up question yourself. You may feel disheartened and lose your motivation, or feel like you are not doing good enough.

Focusing on other milestones will help put you in the right mindset. Instead of looking at the scales, Hall suggests measuring your progress in the following ways instead:

  1. The number of burpees you can do.
  2. The weight and number of lifts you can do with your dumbbells.
  3. The energy you gain.
  4. The confidence you achieve.

Even if the scales are not moving in the right direction as quickly as you wish, the improvements you make in these areas are all valid evidence that you are making good progress toward your goal.