Imagine it… at the first of the year you decide this is it. This is the year you commit to getting healthy. In fact, you even commit to a physique transformation. Yep, you’d like to shed some body fat and see abs by summertime. You get a gym membership and actually use it 3 times a week. You give up drunken bodega trips on Saturday nights and replace them with a hot yoga session. You still have a glass of wine in the evenings but you also have a salad with lunch nearly everyday. 

After a few weeks of this, you determine that yes, you have made progress!.. Haven’t you? 

Well, you’re doing all these “healthy” things
now that you weren’t doing before,
but are you really progressing?
How can you be certain? 

Well, you’ll need to measure your progress somehow. It’s time for data collection. 

There are a million ways to measure results that you’re probably familiar with: Photos, measurements, fitness tests (you can do 3 push-ups at the start of a month and 6 by then end!), how your clothes fit, how you talk to and about yourself, how you’re dancing, if you have more energy, etc.

But there’s one progress measurement tool that has gotten a bad rep… a horrible rep actually. 

So demonized is this piece of equipment that people are known to literally throw it away, hide it in a closet, or get a tattoo on their forehead saying “F*ck this!”

That’s right, you knew it, the scale.

That little device that measures the relationship of your physical being to gravity. I’ll admit, for years the scale was my altar. I’d weigh myself before and after a dance class or workout, before and after a meal, once a day. Twice a day. Did it go down? Winning. Did it go up? Losing. It stayed the same? Losing.

My inner dialog, much of which was perpetuated by media and toxic dance culture (but more on that at another time) told me the scale constantly had to be going down in order for me to be making progress. However, if there was a day when the scale went up… well, that meant I was weak, undisciplined, or wasn’t doing enough. 

If you’ve never experienced an eating disorder or image disorder, or ED/ID tendencies, than I know those thoughts sound completely insane, but for many of us, it’s true.

So yeah, for awhile during my recovery, I did remove the scale from my life.

But eventually I had a breakthrough. An epiphany. You can remove morality from data.

I realized that my relationship with gravity held no weight (see what I did there?) to my relationship with myself. I was able to re-introduce this tool into my life and, for the first time, use it appropriately… something I absolutely was not doing prior.

Imagine, someone hands you a hammer and you try to screw in a nail. The attempts will likely be frustrating and futile. This was my original relationship with the scale. But when I learned how to use the scale as it was intended for data-tracking, I actually found it to be incredibly insightful. 

If you find yourself in a good headspace and looking for another TOOL to measure your progress here’s exactly how to use the scale as a scientific data-gathering resource.

Option 1: Daily

Step 1: Weigh yourself at the same time each day. Before you’ve eaten and before you’ve moved around too much. Ideally, this is the first thing in the morning, after you’ve relieved yourself.

Step 2: Do it nakey. Yeah, if you’re already wearing your wool sweater, jeans, and boots it’s probably not an accurate measurement.

Step 3: Jot it down and forget about it until the next day when you wake up and do it all again.

Step 4: After 7 days, add all the daily weights together and divide by 7 in order to find your WEEKLY AVERAGE.

Step 5: Continue this pattern for 3 more weeks, then compare the average at the end of each week. On average, you gain, lose, or maintain?

Option 2: Bi-Weekly

Step 1: Weigh yourself on the same day every other week (ex. Every 2nd and 4th Thursday). Before you’ve eaten and before you’ve moved around too much. Ideally, this is the first thing in the morning, after you’ve relieved yourself.

Step 2: Do it nakey. Yeah, if you’re already wearing your wool sweater, jeans, and boots it’s probably not an accurate measurement.

Step 3: Jot it down and forget about it until the next week when you wake up and do it all again.

Step 4: After 8-12 weeks, compare your data points. Did you trend down? Up? Stay the same? 

Both of these options take the stress off of daily fluctuations which, as you know, can be influenced by inflammation, water retention, time of the month (ladies), sodium, extra carbs, stress, and a host of other factors that, if you’re obsessing over everyday, will drive you batty and, like young-Amber, lead you down a dangerous, self-destructive path.

By comparing weekly, then monthly averages you pull away from the minutia and the stress of feeling like you need to be “perfect” daily. In fact, you’ll ultimately come to the freeing realization that your progress is not driven by what you did or ate the day prior, but rather your progress is a result of your efforts the month prior and the month before that. 

By using the scale in this manner, you can come to appreciate that you are the result of the things you do most of the time, not some of the time.

It’s a much kinder and more analytical
way to use the scale and actually
follow your progress.

If the scale went UP over the course of 12 weeks, you worked out consistently, and ate within a recommended amount BUT your clothes fit better and you see more muscle tone… congratulations, you probably built some muscles! But this is why using the scale appropriately, in addition to other health tracking factors, is a great well to tell the full story of your progress.

I hope this helps!

xox Am

PS. Some scales are extra fancy and show body fat%, BMI (stupid), and a medley of other things… In my opinion, those are usually wrong and a $10 digital scale off Amazon will do the trick.
Let me know if you have any questions?