Scales

It's January, so everyone is working on their New Years resolutions, right? At least for a few more weeks? Today, I heard a group of women talking about the pounds they would like to shed this year. It was the normal discussion of fad diets and diet pills that really work, when I heard something that struck me. This woman was telling her friends about how she was going to start tracking her weight so she could see her progress at the end. This is reasonable. Then one friend said, "Make sure you weigh yourself in the morning!" And another piped up with, "And do it naked!" The first friend added, "Yeah, you'll weigh the least." The whole group agreed.

I've heard this before. People always talk (and write) about your "real weight" being what you weigh in your birthday suit right when you wake up. This makes absolutely no sense to me. In my opinion, a person's "real weight" is what they weigh on a normal day, eating normal food, in their normal clothes (minus shoes because come on, those things add at least 3 unnecessary pounds). Whose bright idea was it to use the part of the day that you are basically starving as an indicator of what a person really weighs? Granted, anyone is going to feel skinny (or dead) after not eating for 12 hours, but you don't go out and buy clothes based on this absurd "real weight" concept. You try on clothes at any part of the day and buy them for how they fit you at that time. Can you imagine buying a pair of pants a size too small because, "Oh, these will fit me awesomely before I eat breakfast." NO. As a little experiment, I weighed myself at 8AM and again at 8PM. Want to know the difference??

8AM

There was none.

8PM

If you can tear your eyes away from my awkward feet (I put on socks just for you in the second picture), you can see the giant difference in my weight. This actually surprised me because I've done this before and there usually is at least a couple ounces of difference, but nothing really dramatic. The health "experts" make it seem like you are going to throw off your entire weight loss plan if you don't do what they say. Now, notice I also didn't weigh myself naked.

 

1. I'm not ready for the internet to see me naked yet.

2. I'm wearing something I normally wear! On a normal day! For my normal weight!

 

The hair bow adds at least a pound.

See? After tracking your weight like this for a few days, you'll start to have an idea of what you normally weigh with your normal wardrobe. It's so much nicer to have realistic expectations rather than stressing over how soon you'll reach the weight that your body is when it is starving first thing in the morning.



Sincerely,


The Average Person