Weighing in with Noom

I'm starting Week 3 of my Noom program, and it's going great. I'm exercising more. I'm watching what I eat from a holistic perspective, rather than singling out some foods as "bad" (even if my writing and attitude may sometimes lean that way).

I'm enjoying myself!

But one thing I don't like is weighing in daily.

I know from my many past experiences with weight loss programs that weight fluctuates daily based on a lot of factors, including food consumption, level of hydration, and, by the gods, whether or not I've emptied my bowels.

Noom says that daily weigh-ins are motivational. I'll bet they are for a majority of people, but, as we know, if we think scientifically, it is folly to apply generalizations to individuals.

We know that smoking causes lung cancer. 80-90% of all lung cancer cases are a direct result of smoking!

Did you also know that only 10-15% of smokers ever develop lung cancer?

So even though almost all lung cancer is caused by smoking, a smoker's chance of getting lung cancer is actually pretty small, only about 1 in 8.

Those facts are beside the point I'm making here, though. I just thought they were interesting.

Here's the point, using that same smoking population.

Smokers die of diseases that are directly related to smoking at a rate of 67%. That's a very high number, high enough to let us know that we should not smoke.

But that number also means that 33% of smokers do not die of smoking-related diseases.

That's the danger of applying generalizations like "smoking kills you" -- which it does 67% of the time -- to individuals like your Grampa Bert who's smoked two packs a day since he was 16 and still runs marathons. Ol' Bert is one of the minority 33%.

What I'm saying is that I love Noom because it applies science and psychology, and that's a solid foundation for helping me change my habits. But while a daily weigh-in might be statistically and scientifically proven to be motivational for most people, it's not for me.

Why? Because when the scale shows a higher weight than the day before, I go into a funk. Even though I know all the things I listed above, and more, can affect any given weigh-in, I still go into a funk!

It happened to me today. But let me back up.

I weighed in at 190 yesterday after having been below that for a couple days. I was not that funked out by it, because I felt I knew why my weight was up -- I'd added some Red foods I didn't need and blew out my caloric budget a few days ago.

But today I weighed in above 190, at 190.6. And that was after having had a great day yesterday: I got in more than 10k steps and ended up just under my calorie budget. Still, though, I weighed more today.

So, while I've tried to stay inside the Noom program guidelines by weighing daily, from here on out I'll only weigh weekly. I agree that weighing is essential to the program, but my daily weight is too volatile, and I think weekly will smooth it out.

Plus, I think with weekly I'll be more likely to stay on calorie-budget track, because I only have one weigh-in to get "right" each week, so the mystery of which direction my weight is headed will keep me on the straight and narrow.

That's how I feel right now, anyway.