What Not To Do When The Weight Scale Doesn’t Move

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Those of us who are cycling for weight loss have to deal with the weight scale. I hate it and have a real phobia with it. Why? Because it always tells me what I don’t want to see whether it’s an increase in weight or no change at all. Not seeing that weight scale moving in a downward trend has always been a problem for me. I would always become upset or down after getting on the scale after a particularly good week of riding and finding that I didn’t lose any weight. How could I ride that hard this week, put in that many miles, and not see a change in those stupid little numbers? I knew the answer.

It was lying. That’s right, the scale was lying and not telling the truth. I was lighter than that and it must not be showing my weight correctly because I drank a lot of water, I hadn’t gone to the bathroom before weighing myself, had eaten breakfast before stepping on, or any other of a number of lame excuses. You can think up some really good ones when your desperate to see a change on that torture device.

Or it was angry with me. It was tired of getting stepped on by a guy who weighed too much and kept feeding me false information so I would lose faith and quit crushing it to death. It wanted me to quit.

The reality? It was telling the truth.

Gradually, I’m beginning to learn that what the scale tells me isn’t always accurate. Even when it tells me I’m losing weight. That said, I still find myself discouraged when I see no change on the scale. Just because there’s no change though doesn’t mean we aren’t making progress towards our weight loss goals. If you find yourself faced with a weight scale that refuses to budge don’t do the following:

• Quit. Letting those numbers on the scale dictate our lives won’t help us in the long run. It’s easy to want to quit after seeing no change. It’s easy to become frustrated after putting in some hard bike rides and seeing no change. The key is to understand that there will be times when the scale won’t change. Rome wasn’t built in a day so what makes us think we’ll fit into those size 32 jeans in a week?
• Binge Eat. The last thing we need to do is get depressed about our weight and then go on a tear where we eat everything in site. Binge eating because we’re depressed or emotionally upset about the scale won’t help and can be a serious problem.
• Stop weighing. Like it or not, the weight scale will tell us if we’re reaching our bicycling weight loss goals. Avoiding the scale will only make us loath it even more.
• Keep your feelings to yourself. It’s very easy to keep our feelings of frustration pent up. Doing so can let them eat at us until we become a cesspool of emotions that can affect all areas of our lives. If I’m having trouble with the scale I talk to my wife about it. She’s great at putting things into perspective and offering words of encouragement.

Like I said earlier, getting on the weight scale is a necessary evil if we’re going to track our weight loss goals. It doesn’t have to control our lives or dictate our physical or emotional well being. It’s a tool just like everything else in our road cycling equipment bag. It’s just a little more blunt in its delivery. And it doesn’t lie.

Do any of you have other good things not to do if the weight scale doesn’t change. Or goes up?

PhotoC: GenBug