To Weigh or Not to Weigh, THAT is the Question!

3/16/15 359lbs

Like many Americans, I've had a love/hate relationship with the scale. For most of my adult life, I didn't really like what I saw unless the number was getting smaller. But over the years it kept getting bigger and bigger. The highest it got to was 403lbs in February 2014. 

But with the help of bariatric surgery in 2015 I was finally able to lose a massive amount of weight. A year after surgery I was under 230lbs. And in mid 2017 I dipped under 200lbs. Half of my body weight, wow.

By any measure I'm doing GREAT. Obviously, I've lost a lot of weight. But I no longer have diabetes. I'm off of the seven prescriptions I was taking daily. All my blood markers are good-great. I can do things with my body that I never dreamt possible. My mental and emotional health is better. My doctor tells me I'm his "model patient" and that I have my food down to a "science". And I've done this without counting calories or stressing about food. I eat mostly whole foods and exercise regularly.

06/10/16 200ish

Since meeting the surgical team in January 2015 I diligently recorded my weight. You can see a chart of it here:

Trend Weight

Sometimes I would weight back to back days but usually I tried to have a few days in between. Sometimes even weeks. I wanted to get to a point where my weight mattered very little. I think people (especially bariatric patients) place too much emphasis on that number. After all, there are plenty of ways to measure health. But we (as a society) don't go around telling people our blood pressure or resting heart rate or A1C or how fast we can run a mile, etc, etc. Weight seems to trump everything when it comes to how we feel about our health.

When I cleaned up my diet and starting running in late 2016 the pounds just melted off. About a pound a week for eight months or so. And for the most part I've stayed the same weight for the past year. But it seems the last few months a couple of pounds have crept back on. I can feel it in my belly. I'm not concerned that I'm going to gain a ton of weight or anything. My main thing now is that I know that if I weigh less I'll be a faster runner. I'd love to break two hours in my next Half-Marathon and five hours in my next full.

One of my New Year's resolutions was NOT to weigh myself after January 1. I even had my girlfriend hide my scale. So far I've stuck to that. I love the freedom not weighing gives my mental health. I figure for most of human history people didn't know how much they weighed. Do I really need to? On the other hand... I kind of feel like I should weigh myself because one of my caveats in my resolution was that if I felt my clothes getting tighter I would weigh, just to see where I'm at. So... I don't know. For now I'm not. I think I just need to get back to basics with the food and watch my "indulgences" a little better. I still feel great and can run all I want. 

Thoughts? Any personal experiences and feedback welcome!