| jim_ray | member since October 2005 |
NutriMirror Staff male, 69 years old fallbrook, CA | NutriMirror NewsJanuary 12, 2010, 2:21 pm “But, without a scale or a tape measure how do I measure my progress here at NM?”Because weight loss is not our mission here, sometimes I wish we could gather all the scales in the world and just junk them.I get so flustered by the wasted energy and stress and looming failure that comes through the voices of people overly invested in what a silly scale says to them on any given day. I want to hug, spank, and (mostly) help our misdirected strugglers to see a different way forward. I mean we have a tool that should liberate us from the angst, not lead us to depression and frenzy. We are an antidote to 50 years of quick weight loss schemes and diet mindset failures. We need to realize that and learn to enjoy and utilize the power and control that the information we get here gives to us. In fact, the most (maybe only) thing that truly irritates me about the NM website is the contrary “Pounds Lost” counter we have at the top of the page. As soon as we can figure out how to put something in its place that really reflects the nature of what happens here, it’s gone. I mean, I write to people with diet mindsets all day long --- until the veins pop from my neck --- saying there is a higher value to wrap our minds around than losing weight. Then, we turn around and celebrate “pounds lost”. How weak is that? Maybe, instead, we will one day show a running total for “Days in Green”, celebrating the achievement of balance in our lives. NM Family: “Huh? Are you telling me, Jim, that I didn’t come here to lose weight? I think you need to get a grip, old fella’”. Jim: “No, that’s not what I am saying to you in my grandfatherly way (sometimes through clenched teeth) in the comments and posts I write. Of course, we want to lose weight. It is just that losing weight is what happens to us automatically when we do the thing we should be primarily focused upon --- instead of the scale and weight loss.” NM Family: “Say again, Jim, what is that exactly?” Jim: “Well, thank you for the opening, my wonderful NM family”. Jim: “WE ARE HERE TO FIND CONSISTENT PLEASURE IN THE PROCESS OF ACHIEVING BALANCE SO THAT WE CAN BE SUCCESSFUL FOR LIFE. (And, the weight-loss we want just happens for us out of that process.)” Jim: “I’ll have more to detail about that everyday for the rest of this year and beyond. For now, please allow me to get to my point in this post." When we have a goal and a mindset of life-long balance instead of weight loss, here are the important questions and measures we need to focus upon more than our body weight: 1. Are the Home Page weight projections that are based upon my logging and profile settings in agreement with my actual scale weight entries? If not, why not? Don’t freak over every variance. Perfect input and feedback will never be possible. And, scale weight readings are notoriously off. We’re looking here for the BIG swings that may signal we’ve got an incorrect setting (lifestyle, metabolism, etc) or we’re making really poor estimates for what we’re logging. It may take time to sort this out and get our readings closer to the mark. It is important to our learning but we don’t need to get it “right” in a day. 2. Am I in balance on my home page? 3. Am I enjoying the choices I'm making that keep me in balance? If you get your entries and settings as accurate as possible and can answer “yes” to the balance and pleasure questions you WILL reach your weight goal and you WILL experience better health for a lifetime. Isn’t that better than a diet mindset that only leads to failure and a yo-yo lifestyle? DISCLAIMER: Please don't mistake this rant as a plea that you not weigh yourself and enter your weights into the system to get accurately measured feedback. Also, I understand and endorse tracking your weights trhough those little ticker things some people have going on profile pages. These probably are good motivators for people to have. My only concern is the destriuctive mindset that makes weight-loss the end-all and be-all of this journey. We need to intercept and correct that way of thinking.
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