Do you have a debilitating phobia? Are you dreadfully afraid of something specific? For some it might be heights, and others spiders.

Some other things we get to fear a lot more often are pain, rejection or failure. Originally an essential ingredient for survival, fear once kept us safe. But just like a savage beast, fear itself can just as readily turn around and consume us.

It has been said: “Know your enemy,” and in the case of fear, knowing or understanding what we fear is perhaps the first and most crucial step to conquering or, at least, managing it.

Learning how to manage fear and preventing it from defining us and our decisions is probably one of the most liberating achievements we can aspire to, opening the floodgates to new experiences and valuable lessons learned. Forgive me if today’s topic feels a little weighty upon first glance. However, ‘weighty’ here really is the key word. While children might fear the boogie man lurking in their closets, we adults tend to fear another entity resident no further away from our most intimate living quarters: the bathroom scales. Bathroom scales have received a lot of bad press in recent years. However, this is just another one of those instances where fear currently enjoys all too frequent victories in the war against reason and understanding.

For many, bathroom scale readings are more discouraging than encouraging

Health and fitness professionals often suggest avoiding weighing-in too often. I myself have subscribed to this philosophy, knowing full well that most people tend to find bathroom scale readings more discouraging than encouraging. Due to the multiple components of the body that contribute to overall body weight, there are too many factors at play to know whether it is indeed fat that is increasing or decreasing, as opposed to varying levels of hydration or other tissues such as muscle mass. Indeed, body fat is the only body tissue we really want to lose, and the scales simply cannot give us this specialised information.

Coupled with sudden gains in weight typical of starting an exercise programme due to changes in body tissues unrelated to stored fat, we so often end up advising clients to stay away from the scales save a single weigh-in per week, and favour other methods such as measuring the circumference of various body parts like upper arms, waist or thighs.

I cannot help but notice, however, the undertones of fear and lack of understanding at play here. Just like a parent allowing or entertaining an unjustified fear exhibited by a child to go unchecked, it would seem we’re dishing out advice which might be constructed on fairly shaky grounds. New research shows us weigh-ins as frequent even as once per day could actually help us lose more weight and, most importantly, keep it off.

Researchers at Cornell University in the US, conducted a two-year study featured in the Journal of Obesity earlier this month. Just over 160 participants were divided into two groups. While all the participants began the project having lost at least 10 per cent of their body weight, members of one group proceeded to weigh themselves daily over the subsequent two-year period, while members of the other group did not.

It turns out that the group who weighed themselves daily managed to keep more weight off over the study period than those that didn’t. It has been suggested by the researchers that monitoring weight closely allowed the participants to reinforce various behaviours that had a positive effect on keeping body weight down. Perhaps the energy balance equations appear more evident, allowing us to make direct observations of the positive effects of extra bouts of physical activity and avoiding particular foods or snacks. We can start to notice patterns emerging and know what effects they are having on our weight on an immediate and constant basis.

Previous research has already shown that almost half of people who lose weight regain it within a year. Almost everyone regains the lost weight back in five years. Just like the observations that more than half of all new exercisers will quit in the first six months of their new fitness routines, this is another one of those surprising statistics that really prods us fitness professionals to re-think our strategies and approaches. Are we really getting it right? Do we really have anything to lose by trying something new?

We’ve been focusing on how to lose weight for so long now, the more pressing issue has become keeping it off, and the Cornell study investigated precisely this phase.

So don’t fear the scales, but rather strive to understand the numbers is gives you. It is important to keep track, and you could do this with a spreadsheet or even a diary set beside your bathroom scales. Jotting things down makes it easier to identify the connections later on while sifting through the data. Using all the methods available, including circumference measurements and observing the correlations between them, will only serve to present you with a fuller understanding and wider interpretation of what is happening to your body: a clear and positive step towards greater understanding and away from fear of disappointment or discouragement.

And finally, remember that not all scales are exactly alike, so be sure to stick to the same set and stand on them in exactly the same way without leaning forwards or backwards, as this can make a difference too. Good luck!

matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt