by Rita Black
Numbers help you to be accurate. Numbers help you set goals. Numbers help you problem solve. Numbers do not define you. You are not the number on the scale. When you begin thin thinking, you stop letting the number on the scale take your power. You are going to use the scale to gather data and, along with your Inner Coach, you’re going to assess the numbers in a way that helps you track your progress and make changes if needed—that is all!
When you make the sole point of your weight release journey about the numbers on the scale, you lose its purpose. The focus should be on your internal journey and mastering the thinking that allows the scale to go down and remain down. Your attention needs to be on learning to nourish yourself within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release. When you attend to that, the scale will go down.
Remember, when you achieve your ideal weight, it is just a number too. That number isn’t the magic. The journey you took and how you changed your thinking and life to achieve your ideal weight is the real magic. Take the power back from numbers and the scale, and begin weighing like a master.
How to Track Your Weight Like a Master
Here is the step-by-step process of weighing in masterfully:
Weigh yourself daily in the morning before eating, without clothes, and after using the bathroom. If you choose to weigh weekly, I recommend you do so on Thursday or Friday morning when your weight tends to be lightest. Weighing on Monday after the weekend’s extra food indulgences may include water weight and will be inaccurate.
Take a breath before you get on the scale. Remind yourself you are going to love yourself no matter what the number is.
Step on the scale, get the number, and get off. In other words, be like a scientist—collect data not drama.
Record the number on your app (all apps I mention have the ability to record your weight on a digital graph) or the weight chart (provided online at www.FromFatToThinkThinking.com). This gives you an important visual guide for assessing your weight trend over time and not just day to day.
Assess data as a loving scientist to see if the number on the scale is in line with your recordkeeping.
If the number isn’t what you expected, take a moment to figure out whether your recordkeeping is 100 percent accurate. Inaccurate food and exercise records are usually responsible for weight errors.
But weight gain on the scale may be due to something beyond your control. For instance, water retention may be responsible for a gain. If the scale reads a pound up from the day before, ask yourself “Did I eat 3,500 calories more than my Daily Body Burn yesterday?” Probably not, and chances are one of these culprits is to blame:
Estrogen fluctuations in women (PMS, ovulation, menopause)
Excess sodium intake
Humidity
Dehydration
Altitude
Post-travel water retention
Illness or infection
Another possibility is that you are experiencing the “water weight plateau.” You can expect this to occur during the first six weeks of any weight loss. You can avoid the freak outs and cognitive distortion when this happens by using this next strategy—Avoid the Water-Weight Plateau Trap.
Avoid the Water-Weight Plateau Trap
Have you ever dieted with great weight release results for the first few weeks and then it stops for no good reason? And did that weight plateau seems to last forever? Did it cause you to get discouraged and give up? Does it lead you to make assumptions, such as “I have no metabolism” or “That diet was good at the beginning but then stopped working.”
Chances are that you were experiencing the water-weight plateau trap. Your interpretation of what was happening on the scale caused fat thinking and put you back into the Weight Struggle Cycle.
I would like to walk you through how the water-weight plateau works and a strategy to help you and your Inner Coach be powerful during the plateau.
Water Weight 101
Before you started staying within the limits of your Calorie Budget for Weight Release, you were feeding your body more calories than it needed. Many of those excess calories probably came from carbohydrates. Your body took that extra carbohydrate and converted it to glycogen molecules, which were stored in your muscles and liver. These glycogen molecules are bonded to water molecules, resulting in about three to four grams of water for every gram of glycogen.
When you begin any weight loss plan, cleanse, or detox, you are cutting calories, including those from carbohydrates. When you’re eating less food, your body still needs to function, so it pulls those glycogen molecules from your muscles and liver to make up for the calorie deficit and releases the water molecules for excretion from your body.
This water loss is where all the fat thinking begins. Let’s say your weekly weight release goal is one pound. You eat less and exercise more to burn that 3,500 calories. Your body releases one pound, but chances are the scale will tell you that you released more, sometimes much more.
You step on the scale, see a dramatic weight loss, and say “Wow I’ve lost four pounds this week!” You actually haven’t lost four pounds; you released one pound as per the laws of physics, and the rest was water!
The first three weeks you stay within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release, the scale could be down as much as ten pounds or more, but according to the laws of physics you have only really burned three pounds, the rest is water weight. Usually, around week three or four, the tide begins to turn, so your weight appears to plateau according to the scale. The plateau represents the fact that the water stores are gone, and you are catching up to the scale with your weight release.
The Ecstasy and the Agony of Water Weight
The initial water weight that causes “illusionary” weight loss is how a lot of fad diets, low-carb plans, cleanses, and bad-science, weight-loss programs hook you with dramatic weight loss claims. Don’t fall for them! I know it’s wonderful to think that you are losing all this weight so quickly in the beginning, but the weight release inevitably comes to a screeching halt and you don’t know why. You blame yourself and your body. You give up, feel like a failure, and fall deeper into the Weight Struggle Cycle.
This “catching up with the scale” plateau is tricky mentally. This is where Weight Masters look to their recordkeeping for assurance. Like them, you will find you are still releasing weight, even through the plateau, because you are still burning 3,500 calories a week. In a few weeks, you will catch up with the scale and see a weight release that is more consistent with your weight release goal.
Here is how you and your Inner Coach can stay rational during a water-weight plateau:
Keep food, exercise, and weight records.
Expect the water-weight release up front and don’t get conned into believing that it’s fat loss.
Look at your records frequently in the first few weeks to see how many calories you have burned, and whether you have stayed within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release.
You can also calculate how much actual weight you have released by looking at the overall amount of calories you have burned since beginning and dividing that number by 3500. When the plateau begins, keep reminding yourself that you will catch up with the scale, and the plateau will end.
Keep your weight records on an app, such as Lose It! or My Fitness Pal, or on a graph in a paper notebook.
Once you start building the skill of keeping records, you will experience a real sense of confidence in your ability to truly be able to create your own weight release and not fall prey to fad diets or get discouraged on the scale. You and your Inner Coach will now be savvy weight releasers who use recordkeeping to accurately move forward on your journey to weight release.
Case Study: Jennifer Mastered the Scale
My client Jennifer thought her body was broken. For years she was caught in the frustration of the water-weight trap. Inva
riably, she gave up when she stopped losing weight in the first few weeks of whatever diet she tried. She came to me and got the facts about how to release weight at a rate she decided using her Calorie Budget for Weight Release. She learned how to track her food and exercise and let her Inner Coach guide her through the expected plateau.
“I reminded myself that I was releasing weight even when it didn’t show up on the scale. My recordkeeping helped me confirm that I was burning calories with exercise. I spoke calmly to myself about paying attention to things that made me feel good other than the numbers on the scale.”
Jennifer managed to stay within her Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release (1,400 calories) for one pound to be released a week, even while eating things like waffles and the occasional hamburger. Over the course of the year, she tracked her weight release on a piece of graph paper she kept by her scale. She would come and show me the graph as she consistently stayed within her budget for weight release.
Some months later, her weight went down quickly, but there were other times when Jennifer experienced a plateau for four weeks. Then the weight on the scale dropped, and realigned with her recordkeeping. I assured her all the while that this is normal in a weight release journey. There are so many internal and external variables with fluctuations in water weight that the scale won’t always show results day to day.
At the end of the year, 52 weeks later, Jennifer came in beaming and showed me her graph paper. Sure enough, she had released 50.8 pounds.
“The laws of physics work!” she said. “My scale and my body work just fine.”
“Understanding how to weigh myself on the scale not only gave me the mental tools I needed to push past long plateaus during my process, but the knowledge also helped me pay attention to more important things than the numbers going up and down. Since I realized my body wasn’t broken after all, I began to truly love my body. I became more patient with learning how to care for it. By nurturing myself, I finally began to feel I had a nice relationship with myself—on and off the scale. That’s worth my weight in gold!” she said. Jennifer R, (Released 51 pounds, maintaining 4 years)
WEIGHT MASTERY SKILL 4 SUM UP: Self-Monitoring
Monitoring your food, exercise, and weight allows you to consistently stay within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release and keep moving forward.
Monitoring your food, exercise, and weight gives you and your Inner Coach data needed to adjust things quickly if you get off track.
By tracking daily, you are able to spot challenging times and foods and make adjustments—continuing to improve your healthy eating and exercise systems.
Weighing yourself consistently yields data that lets you know if the actions you are taking are allowing you to release weight at a rate you decide.
Tracking your weight on a graph is a clear picture of the pace with which you are releasing weight. This rational viewpoint keeps you out of that “this isn’t working” head that tempts you to give up.
APPRENTICE PAUSE: I hope you are beginning to see how self-monitoring helps you interface with the weight skills and understand the synergy between the Nine Skills. Self-monitoring is the skill that many clients initially question the most. Eventually, though, they say they gain the most value from it. I still track my food and exercise to this day. Over the years I have come to see it as one of the loving ways I tune into myself over the course of my day.
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Okay, let’s get off the scale and look at another skill that impacts the scale but in a different way—SKILL 5, Stimulus Control.
CHAPTER 29
WEIGHT MASTERY SKILL 5
Stimulus Control
SKILL 5: Stimulus Control. The skill of keeping your environments stocked with healthy food choices and cleared of trigger foods that create temptation.
For millions of years, man spent a good part of his life chasing down food to eat. Today in a world overloaded with food choices, food is now chasing us, and it’s winning.
Fat thinking and Stimulus Control
I always ask Shift Weight Mastery Process participants to list the environments, times of day, and trigger foods they reach for. Most of their lists aren’t long, but they are powerful!
Cheese when I come home from work—with wine!
Crackers or chips in front of the TV.
My boss’s candy jar in the afternoon when I’m stressed.
Leftover birthday cake in the staff room.
Nine times out of ten, when a client has had had a slip and regained a few pounds, it is because a tempting food or a particular set of foods has come into one of his or her environments. Never underestimate the power that food—especially a stimulating trigger food—has on your brain and your ability to control it.
Trigger foods are foods that you can’t eat just a little of. They tend to be a food that turns on your brain’s need to eat more and more until the bag, box, or bowl is empty. Trigger foods also tend to be highly refined foods that contain big mouth and brain pleasers, such as sugar, fat, and salt. There are exceptions to this rule. Some people go for peanut butter, dried fruits, cheeses, or high-fat dairy. Any food you find yourself circling back for or thinking about constantly can pose a “stimulus” issue.
According to Brian Wansink, PhD, author of Mindless Eating, when adults are put into a state of perpetually having to decide whether or not to give in to food temptations, they get worn down and eventually give in. That is why relying on your ability to be strong and exert willpower in the presence of your favorite, fattening trigger food is a form of fat thinking. It just doesn’t work.
Thin Thinking And Stimulus Control
Weight Masters adopt a proactive attitude with their environments rather than a defensive one. They use their minds to think on a different level—protection. You can cultivate thin thinking by choosing foods that are going to be best for you in your environments and avoiding foods that challenge your weight release and maintenance.
Here are two thin thinking strategies that will make a huge difference to your long-term weight release success:
Stimulus-proof your environments, such as your home, work, gym, car, or any place where you spend time and/or are prone to eat your trigger foods.
Create loving boundaries with your trigger foods.
1-Stimulus-Proof Your Environments
This three-part stimulus control strategy is incredibly easy in theory. Your challenge is to make it a practice.
Keep Healthy Snacks Available
You walk in your front door after spending the last 45 minutes in traffic, and your blood sugar level is dropping as you head into the kitchen. You have to start dinner, but as you open the fridge to pull out the salmon and salad fixings, the first things your eyes fall on are three leftover pieces of pizza. How much willpower do you have to assert in order not to stand there and eat at least a few bites of that pizza, if not all three slices?
What if the pizza was in the back of the fridge in a covered container, and the first thing you saw was the salmon and green beans you’re going to prepare for dinner and a container of pea pods and cucumber slices to munch on while you cook. Because you wouldn’t see the pizza, your mind isn’t engaged to think about it and doesn’t have to exert energy to resist it. Out of sight, out of mind, and out of mouth!
Make a point when you shop to have healthy snacks to reach for at work and at home and in all of your environments. If you keep the healthier options up front and easily available, your mind will stay tuned to nourishing yourself.
If a Food is Challenging You, Move It or Get Rid of It
There are a few ways to do this:
Keep challenging food out of sight. Creating a visual barrier between you and the food sometimes is enough. I had a client who created a visual barrier between her and the corn chips on the table at Mexican restaurants
by putting the napkin holder and glasses between her and the chips. Put trigger foods in cupboards or drawers or in the back of the pantry so they aren’t in view.
Freeze the trigger food. This works great for bagels, bread, cookies, and baked goods. It removes the urge to pop some into your mouth impulsively.
Dispose of the food. If the previous tactics still don’t work, put the food in the garbage, and if you continue thinking about it, put the food in the garbage on the street. That, my dear apprentice, is stimulus control. The garbage disposal works well too. Remember, it’s not a waste of money if it saves you from pain and suffering. Avoiding the few hours of feeling bad about yourself is worth the price of disposing some trigger foods.
Stimulus-Proof Your Shopping
Millions of dollars are spent getting you to walk zombie-like down grocery aisles, putting the pretty packages in your cart and getting them through checkout without thinking about the later consequences to your body and your weight struggle. Don’t be a pawn in their numbers game! Take back your power at the store.
We often undermine our weight management by buying things for other people at the grocery store. Parents often use the excuse that “it’s for the kids.” Two more common excuses are “what if friends come over” and “it’s on sale.” Shift your mind and stay focused on what you need from the grocery store. Walk by anything that you know will be calling your name later that night. Make a shopping list and stick to it!
If your Inner Rebel says “I have to buy ice cream for the kids,” but it’s you who ends up eating it, pass on the ice cream. How? Take a deep Shift Breath, connect with your thin thinking Inner Coach, and ask yourself:
If I buy this ice cream, what will really happen to it?
Is that ice cream going to be calling my name all night?
Is that ice cream going to be for the kids or the guests? Will I end up looking at the bottom of the empty carton and cursing myself for falling for the old “it’s for the kids” con again?