My husband and I were talking about my plan for maintenance, and one of the things we discussed was how measuring fit in.

For me, I weigh (and write it down) daily now and need to keep doing that. That said, it took some serious attention on my part to get to where I was able to do that without being judgemental about the scale number. Now it is just one of many pieces of information that add up to tell me if I am doing what I need to succeed. The other pieces of information include measurements (tape measure and body fat), pedometer step counts, carb count, calorie balance measures, heart rate monitor and even altimeter for measuring hiking ascent - and these are going to stay a part of maintenance as well as weight loss.

None of this would work, though, if I gave myself permission to beat myself up for a blip gain on the scale or for an exercise day where I take the easy hike paths instead of vertical ones!

Getting comfortable and routine with measurements is a powerful fool - as powerful a tool as checkbook balancing and knowing what's in your retirement fund is family finances. But without question, there is some work involved in the process of getting comfortable and matter of fact about things. When I went through the process of really taking chare of our family financial plan for the first time, it was very similar to being scale obsessive. That went away, though, as I saw again and again that my behaviours were having the intended effect on my bank account. Same with weight/body health. After a period of time seeing certain behaviors have certain effects of weight, resting heart rate (an athletic 46 - 48! Never imagined I would do something like that!), energy level, clothes size, stamina, etc - I could get more relaxed about things and have more faith in my ability to manage them.

For me, there's no way I can expect to have 40+ years of succesful maintenance without intentionally staying aware of certain measurable things. If I don't look at them, I will eventually gain - no question about it. My body is very efficient at storing fat. I absolutely need to measure without judgement to maintain. I expect there is going to be a period of time where I'll need to learn to have some faith about my ability to keep my weight in a 5 lb range, or to keep exercising for health instead of weight loss, and the toughie - to learn to add more calories and healthy carbs without turing on the carb craving monster again. I'm going to need to learn how to do that as a routine and without stress and obsession which means it could take some work to get to the calm habit point.

I know obsession behaviors are bad. There's two ways to handle them, though - avoid the situations that cause them or learn to handle the situations in a non-obsessive manner. For me, avoiding never made scale fear or checkbook balance fear go away - it just shoved it to the back of my head instead of the front of it. That's why I'm use the other method.

Different things will work for different folks, of course.

Lynda