The Wisdom Of John Tesh
Who'd have ever guessed John Tesh would ever be mentioned on this blog? And oh, I have a John Tesh story! Back when I was in high school, my father brought home a couple of John Tesh T-shirts from work, and gave them to me and my best friend Tim, I guess thinking we would enjoy proclaiming our John Tesh love for the world. Being smartasses, what we actually did was pull out a Sharpie and "autograph" each other's shirts. I don't remember what I signed, but I remember that Tim signed my shirt "Yanni sucks! Love, John Tesh." That still makes me laugh.
Anyway, I don't have a link for you, but I was listening to John Tesh on the radio today, and he was talking about a new study about stepping on the scale. The conventional wisdom is that weighing yourself daily is a bad idea, because of day-to-day weight fluctuations, and that you should instead weigh yourself once per week. Well, this study showed that people who weighed themselves daily actually lost twice as much weight as people who weighed in weekly. One caveat was that obsessive people should weigh in less frequently, because for those people, weighing every day might lead to weighing six or more times per day and isn't healthy.
It does make some sense, though. If there's something I'm doing every day--whether it be weighing myself or keeping a food journal or going to the gym--I'm more mindful and aware of what I'm choosing to eat. Anyway, I thought that was fairly interesting, and also a way that John Tesh can finally be a part of Big Fat Deal, which is I know what we've all been waiting for. Yanni sucks!
Anyway, I don't have a link for you, but I was listening to John Tesh on the radio today, and he was talking about a new study about stepping on the scale. The conventional wisdom is that weighing yourself daily is a bad idea, because of day-to-day weight fluctuations, and that you should instead weigh yourself once per week. Well, this study showed that people who weighed themselves daily actually lost twice as much weight as people who weighed in weekly. One caveat was that obsessive people should weigh in less frequently, because for those people, weighing every day might lead to weighing six or more times per day and isn't healthy.
It does make some sense, though. If there's something I'm doing every day--whether it be weighing myself or keeping a food journal or going to the gym--I'm more mindful and aware of what I'm choosing to eat. Anyway, I thought that was fairly interesting, and also a way that John Tesh can finally be a part of Big Fat Deal, which is I know what we've all been waiting for. Yanni sucks!
posted by mo pie at 8:43 AM
10 Comments:
I never understood that day-to-day fluctuation thing. Why is that a reason NOT to weigh daily? It's more reason to weigh daily. You can keep a mental moving average in your mind of the last few days, which will tell you what you really weigh.
If you're some sort of head case who freaks out at a fluctuation and goes into a depression, see a shrink, take your meds, get cured -- and then weigh daily.
Throughout my entire time on Weight Watchers (62 lbs and counting!) I have always been a daily weigher. People have given me SUCH a hard time about it, but it's what keeps me in check. I understand the daily weight fluctuations and for the most part don't let anything get to me, but there are times when a high number that won't go away tells me that it's time to get serious again.
Like... right now.
I've been weighing myself daily and then using the math described in The Hacker's Diet to compute a trend line that smooths out the fluctuations. The result is that I can tell when a sudden jump up is still within the "margin of error".
Anyway, I'm not surprised that people who weighed in more often lost more, because for a long time at the beginning the weighing was the only feedback I had that I was making any progress at all.
I can't see what's wrong with weighing every day, either - I'd have thought doing it just once a week would be harder to make into a habit, and also would make you apt to be derailed more by an apparent rise (even if you would be down again the next day, you wouldn't know it).
As for me, I only weigh at the gym, because that way I'm always wearing the same clothes, it's roughly the same time of day, and it's always the same scale - I want a reasonably consistent picture. If I did it every day, there would be more variation because I wouldn't always be able to provide the same conditions - which is the only reason I don't do it.
OT: I don't think the "see a shrink, take your meds, get cured" attitude is very helpful when it comes to depression. If you are really suffering from depression, it might not be that straightforward to "cure" you. And you might indeed find it a bit hard to have a sense of proportion over things which (under normal circumstances) aren't all that upsetting.
I have to declare an interest as my other half has depression, and has had for years. It's an illness. It doesn't help when people treat it as though it isn't. And use phrases like "head case".
Weighing yourself everyday also allows you to see that big jumps can happen at any time, and so your weekly weigh-in isn't as momentous an occasion as it could be. Gaining or dropping a pound in a day, then realizing it was just a fluctuation (water retention, etc.) is a healthy way to look at it.
John Tesh can't hold a candle to Yanni, though. I attended a Yanni concert. Voluntarily.
What study is this? I find it hard to believe people lost twice as much weight. I can accept that they lost more, but double sounds like a hell of a lot. Maybe he was just paraphrasing.
PQ: that's the thing about studies and the way they're reported... I'm pretty sure I've heard this benefit about weighing daily before, but it was listed among a lot of other habits of people who successfully lost weight. The attitude/behavior set that includes daily weighing is what helps WL; they make it sound like the magical act of weighing will actually cause it single-handedly.
The study was, I think, done by researchers at the University of Minnesota? I could be remembering that wrong. But they were talking about 6 pounds of weight lost vs. 12 pounds, over a certain time period, and I don't remember which one. Helpful, huh?
Damn, the Hacker's Diet is longer than Protein Power.
I don't weigh. Weighing makes me crazy. I try on the same pair of jeans once every two weeks. Mark is really being unhelpful because he clearly has no idea what kinds of havoc antidepressants can wreak with your weight.
All haters back off Yanni. HA!
Actually, you haven't REALLY done new age until you've done Andreas Vollenweider. With iridescent butterfly dancers at the Wang Center. Seriously. It rocked.
Weighing yourself is actually counter-productive to the long-term goal of overall health.
When you focus on weight-loss, your exercize becomes situational. You stay motivated if you see change. If you stop seeing change, you become depressed and hopeless and your motivation fails. Some folks might find greater motivation when the scale stops moving, but then there's the Set Point concept - where, with a reasonable/maintainable amount of excercise and a healthy diet, each body has a natural "set-point" at which it will plateau. It's possible to push past the set-point and lose addititonal weight, but any system based on deprivation is not sustainable, nor is working out in a compulsive or unreasonable fashion.
So folks whose set points might be higher than they wish it was tend to find scales crazy-making because, instead of focusing on the fact that they're fit, have all the energy they need and are in good health - they're focusing on the fact that they still can't fit into those jeans.
Weight loss should be a *possible* byproduct of more healthful activity, and not the goal in and of itself. This is why so few folks lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off - because once they lose weight, and depending on the methods by which they lost it, they either haven't curbed unhealthy habits, or don't have the motivation necessary to 'maintain' weight-loss because they're no longer receiving the daily affirmation of watching the scale move. Maintenance is boring. Working out and eating right because your body loves it, and you enjoy the feeling it gives you - that's maintainable.
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