“Frieney” def : blending of “friend” and “enemy” that can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or to a partner who is simultaneously a competitor or rival.
Over the many years of gaining and losing weight, I realize that the unhealthiest relationship I had was with my scale. There! I said it. My scale was my best frienemy. It was the thing I loved to hate. With one click to the left it could make me feel great; totally in control and on the right path. A click to the right and I felt like the biggest loser (no pun intended); unable to control my eating habits or my training schedule. Through the years of talking to many clients, it is nice to know that I am not the only one who treats/treated the scale as a living, breathing, entity, complete with good and bad moods. While reading several articles on “Scale Addiction” by Yonee Freedhoff, I re-learned points that made it much easier to take some of the pressure off of stepping on the scale.
Scales are truly frustrating devices because they don’t simply measure caloric intake vs caloric expenditure. We put so much stock in the number and they don’t even measure just weight. They measure clothing, water retention, constipation and time of day differences. Folks who weigh regularly will know that weight fluctuates both day by day and within a day. Freedhoff makes 2 great points that I want to share with you.
First, there is 3500 calories in a pound, and while bodies are not mathematical instruments whereby if you do or do not eat 3500 calories you will see a pound change on the scale, bodies do obey the laws of thermodynamic (. If you step on a scale on Wednesday and it’s 3 pounds heavier than Tuesday, unless you consumed at least 10,500 calories more than you burned, the scale is weighing something other than true weight.
Second, you weight does not matter! To put it simply, what moves the number on the scale is not the act of standing on the scale. It is your lifestyle and your choices that change your weight. You need to determine how you’re doing by how YOU are doing. What have your dietary choices been like? How’s your fitness? Are you thinking about what you do before you it? Are you organized, and more importantly, consistent?
At some point I came to realize that the scale is neither my friend, nor my enemy. The scale is just something to provide you with another piece of information with which to help you make informed decisions. Scales can be helpful to illustrate trends, but weight fluctuations, both inter day and intra day, are normal.
I think the most important thing to remember is that sometimes life is worth more calories. Sometimes it just happens that way and sometimes it is for great reasons, but at no time should you let that scale have the power to push you around. Life is dynamic and so too is your weight and your healthy living efforts. At the end of the day, it’s your life that can change the scale and not the other way around.
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