Nutritional Myths and Weight Loss
When it comes to dieting and fitness, there are a lot of things people are told that isn’t true. Weight loss and nutritional myths are nothing new. Still, they can cause severe problems for the people who take them seriously. If you want to get in shape, you need to know what you should be doing and what you shouldn’t be doing. But to trust in it, you need to know it’s a fact. So what we’re going to do is dispel one common weight loss myth.
The myth we’re going to talk about is the one where you’re told not to weigh yourself when you’re on a diet. Now, why do you think this myth exists? Well, the reasons we immediately come up with makes sense at first. Take a look at a few of them:
If you weigh yourself when you’re on a diet and trying to lose weight, it will become easy for you to get discouraged if the scale doesn’t move the way you want.
So the notion is that by staying away from the scale, you won’t hurt your confidence. Is this the case? The answer is no. If you do not weigh yourself, how can you know what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right? If you get on the scale and it doesn’t move, you need to make some changes. If it moves the way you want, then you can keep doing what you’re doing.
If you weigh yourself, then this means you’re expecting results too quickly.
That is a good argument at first, but weighing yourself doesn’t have to mean you’re not serious. Some people need the motivation to keep on going. Even if a scale tells them they lose one pound, this might be enough for them to keep going when they feel like giving up. People don’t want to invest their valuable time and energy into anything they think isn’t going to return dividends for them.
Weighing yourself is going to make it easy for you to settle.
Some people have a goal to lose a certain amount of weight. Let’s say a person who is 220 pounds wants to lose 60 pounds. They are willing to diet for at least a year to achieve this goal. If that person steps on the scale after two months and sees they have lost 15 pounds, how likely do you believe they are going to settle for this? Yes, some people will stop way short of their goal, satisfied they lost a nice fraction of it. However, this isn’t going to be the case all the time.
Stepping on the scale will constantly put you on an emotional rollercoaster.
There is a little truth in this, but only to a small degree. If you’re satisfied that you lose 5 pounds in two weeks and then depressed because you gained back three when you step on the scales again, it’s no reason to give up. It’s just a sign that you’re doing something wrong. If you didn’t get on the scale, how would you be able to keep track of your progress so you could monitor the things you’re doing to cause such regressions? Stepping on the scale is a must.
The fact is you should weigh yourself as often as you need to. Just don’t expect to see the scale drop every time you get on it. Losing weight is going to be a journey. Plus, the scale will tell you what diets are working for you and which ones aren’t. But you have to be reasonable and allow some time before making this determination, though.