Weighing on Your Mind? Losing Weight With The Family

My son, his wife and myself have all decided to lose a few pounds before feeling the obligated push of the New Year's Resolution craze. Doing so would allow us to name some other obscure habit for this ritual that we all know we will fall short on in 2008. So be it that "the holidays" are only a few days away with temptation dangling in our faces like a sprig of holly hanging decoratively in a doorway. I still stand by the adage that a couple of pounds is a couple of pounds!

The rhyme and reasons of which diet we have chosen to torture ourselves with in order to do this is not my major awareness at this moment. It's the way we handle the weigh in that just amazes me.

My son is a do-it-a-day kind of weigh-er, while my daughter-in-law does it weekly. Me, I sort of do it when I get motivated and since they own the scales I need to convince them to drag them down to my part of the house and get on their knees to make sure the needle is on the correct number or slash - whichever benefits my gentle sole. Every line counts here folks! And it does not help when they mess with my mind and tell me I have gained! Talk about a bruised and battered ego.

Now, recently I have come across a lot of debate on the habits of weighing in on the scales.

Did you know that a mid-western university actually did research on loss percentages by monitoring people's weighting habits? Who comes up with these ideas and who pays for a group of "researchers" to sit around with clipboard in hand and once a day or once a week weigh in a cluster of people? Please!

Anyway, apparently it appears that daily weighing can momentum weight loss. Researchers have screened the scaling habits of 1,800 "go on a diet, watch your weight, starve yourself, fasting" adults. It appears that daily weigh-ins found they lost an average of 12 pounds over 2 years. Ok - that would be twelve pounds in 2 years or 24 months. Six pounds a year or half a pound a month. Arrgh! Talk about frustration!

In spite of the aggravation I would think it would cause I suppose the numbers are better then the weekly scale watchers who lost only 6 pounds in the 24-month span. Narrow that down to pound per month! Makes me wonder exactly where I fit in?