What I did: Weekly Weigh-In

It is important to track your progress systematically. Not obsessively, but systematically. The first thing I will say is that you do need to weigh yourself regularly to track your progress, but NOT every day. Your weight fluctuates every day based upon eating, drinking and “regular bodily functions.“ From the beginning of my weight loss journey, I had a recurring calendar reminder to do a weekly weigh-in every Monday at 8:30 AM. Being in the wedding business keeps me very busy on the weekends, so I try to keep Monday as my "day off" or as close to one as I ever get, which is part of my reason for Monday as my weigh-in day. I have a very specific protocol for my weekly weight check. I get up in the morning, use the restroom, and right before I step into the shower, I step on the scales. You see, I want to know how much I weigh. I don’t care about the weight of things IN me or ON me. Following this weekly method of tracking my weight gives an accurate representation of my progress. Seven days is enough for the body to adjust to calorie burn, exercise, and it factors in your daily ups and downs.

I am a big proponent of using the Health app in my iPhone to track my weight. I can go through the data from this app and look at the chart to see my weight loss progress. Every time I check my weight, I input the new data in my health app. I also input the data in my Adidas running app. I learned an interesting lesson over the course the past year. It’s a simple matter of basic mathematics and physics, that it requires more energy and therefore more calories burned for a 305 pound man to walk four miles than does a 185 pound man. When you start checking your numbers, in the beginning when you are at your heaviest weight, it’s easy to see that you’re burning a lot of calories in your physical activity. As you begin to lose weight, your body becomes more efficient, and your body is carrying less weight around, therefore you burn less calories per session. That is part of the reason that about midway through my journey, I actually increased the amount of walking that I was doing and I decreased the amount of food that I was eating to make sure that I was staying on track and burning enough calories to lose all of the weight. This is a good point to remind everyone who is reading all of this that it is a lot of hard work to lose a lot of weight. It takes a lot of time to lose a lot of weight. It took two weeks short of a year to lose 120 lbs. I did not use shortcuts. I did not have bariatric surgery. I did not employ a personal trainer, nor did I join a gym. I did this for the past year with hard work, determination and a plan. I made a plan, I tracked my calories and my weight. Now that I have lost all the weight, I still have my weekly weigh-in every Monday at 8:30 AM. Today, I weighed in at 184.6 lbs which is right inside my target, which is not to exceed 185 lbs and not to drop below 180 lbs. If I can do it, you can do it. So…go do it!

For those interested in my weight loss journey, I’ve started sharing details on my new platforms. Follow me on Facebook at Weddings and Weight Loss and on Instagram @WeddingsAndWeightLoss. You can also go to my website, WeddingsAndWeightLoss.com.