I love everything about this picture (thanks for posing, Witchy). I love that she's on the scale, that she's grabbing her ankles, and that she has this expression on her face that looks like the scale was not telling her something she was expecting to see.Mystery pounds are one of the most frustrating things about taking a close look at the scale and what you're consuming and how your diet is effecting your life. All of us have them. We are dieting, doing exercises, being conscientious about what we eat and when we eat it, and lo and behold the next trip on the scale shows mystery pounds that appear from nowhere.
Even when we're not actively dieting but we're not over-indulging, it seems impossible that the numbers on the scale creep up and up and up. I think those mystery pounds are more damaging to lifestyle changes because of their profound effect on the psyche. It takes discipline to limit intake, to make different food choices, and to make an active decision to exercise - even when you don't feel like it. The most instant gratification for doing this isn't, in my opinion, feeling better, having clothes become loose, or having a smaller appetite -it's seeing the cold hard proof on the scale.
I think there is something deeply ingrained in us by society that only the numbers count. When an actor or a model is told to lose weight, they aren't told to lose 3 inches or 2 dress sizes, they're told to drop 15 pounds or 30 pounds. The last I checked, they don't measure body mass index in dress sizes, it's determined by weight.
When you get on the scale after skipping the ice cream with the birthday cake, foregoing the regular soda or regular beer for diet or light alternatives, and then the scale slaps you with 2 or 3 mystery pounds, you want to get off the scale, go to the refrigerator, and flip off the universe by immersing your head in a gallon of ice cream. You want to look in the mirror and accept that you are destined to be fat and learn how to deal with it.
In the past week and a half I'm down 3.4 pounds total. I'm not complaining about this, and I do think this is significant weight loss. It's significant especially considering I am eating food - not ice-cubes - that I'm not really engaging in a huge amount of exercise over and above house work and yard work. But even with this weight loss I still suffer the effects of mystery pounds. They are temptation to drink regular soda, to overindulge in waffles, to eat until midnight. I think the most frustrating aspect of the mystery pounds is that you know, you really know - those pounds aren't permanent. They could disappear just as quickly, or grow into even more poundage. Even still, those tiny numbers still have enough of a psychological effect to potentially end a health or weight loss endeavor.
I think in the end the weight loss game has been called a lot of things - a "complete lifestyle change", a "committment to healthiness", etc etc. People work and cheat in all kinds of ways, with diet, fad diets, exercise, drugs, cleanses, enemas, and in the extreme binging and purging and severe eating disorders. In reality, weight loss is a mind game, one that's much easier to lose than to win. The mind game goes on long after the pounds have disappeared, the diet fad has changed, and the kegel-thigh-ab-sizer has been reduced to a late night joke. Every time you button your pants, look in a mirror, take off your clothes, or walk by a scale, the mind games and the mystery pounds are waiting for you.
Grab your ankles.
Someone photoshopped my belly rolls out of that picture and took me from a size 11 shoe to a size 4. But you're welcome. <3 Witchy
ReplyDeleteAnd here I was going to write one about the mental game, myself.... in fact, I may still.
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