Weight? The real measure or just convenience?

Improved health is the most important measurement. Improved healthy comes with weight loss and is sustained with sustained weight loss.

If I weighed myself every day before I would have never got so large so fast and stayed there for so long. The weight came on like a freight truck and would not leave. I never weighed myself before except at the Dr. That was obviously a poor choice. I won't make that mistake again.

WLS gave me a chance to reset, restart and do things differently.

I weigh myself every morning. This has allowed me to see trends and not be so offended and disappointed by what I see on the scale.

I am aggressively defending my health for the rest of my life, I know it is like to be diabetic and sick and I never want to feel like that ever again. I have to weigh myself to keep the defense going.

It is a lot easier to lose 5 or 10 pounds than 20. I never want to let my weight get away from me.

Like someone else said, all the people that say weight doesn't matter, goal doesn't matter, they regain most if not all of their weight.

BMI is unrealistic and ethnically biased. Still it is the metric we have. BMI doesn't rule my life but it matters.

My measurements are the measurements of someone about 20-30 pounds lighter. My measurements put me in the acceptable body fat range, my waist to hip ratio is .71. Measurements matter too, especially if you have a lot of loose skin.

On WLS boards it seems like the numbers matter the most because that is what you see all the time. When you read posts, you learn that people care and measure their success in a lot of other ways. Being able to play with children, better intimacy with their partners, improved healthy, improved fitness.

Interesting that you didn't get weight before surgery ... Do you ask why this is the way they do it? My clinic weighs at every visit, I guess I thought that was standard.

I weigh myself once a week for my weight loss challenge group as I find the daily fluctuations stressful. I also track my measurements.

But, yes, the numbers do matter and they will matter more once we get closer to our goal weights and the weight loss slows down...

For me, weight is the most accurate measure of my progress. I can buy clothes in many different sizes. I can be bloated, or holding water so my clothes are tight. Some days I am super fast in a sport, or I am slow as molasses. It could be humidity affecting my asthma, or the couple of pounds I gained. It could be over-training. BMI is really just a guess at the scale unless you are tested. So for me weighing is the most accurate indication of my progress. Now, I do factor in things like no sleep (body stressed, holding water), or hard exercise (water weight gain) or being in the sun (body stressed, holding water). I have a 3-4 pound range in maintenance. If I am in the middle of my range, no junk food. If I am at the top of my range, it is time for drastic measures, like protein and veggies only for a couple of days.

Every day, all day is a glorious day with all the things you can do for extended periods. It hasn't gotten "old" for me. I am thankful everyday for my WLS.

I weigh every day. I balance my checkbook at the end of every month. I check the gas gauge in my car and make sure the oil is full.

Whenever I ignore something, bad stuff happens. Whenever I ignored the scale for long periods, my weight soared upward.

There are many posts here about NSVs- Non-Scale Victories- the freedoms you now have from losing the weight. One I never get tired of is running up and down the stairs in my house....

I am a daily weigher. Record once a week. I had to get past the mental challenges of that....

I would not do it any other way. In the beginning you will lose weight no matter what for the most part...for the long haul you need to stay focused, and if I see the scale going the wrong direction for too many days, I can examine what I've been doing... I still have the ability to do a lot of damage weight-wise to my body in a week or a month if I am not paying attention...

While I know not everyone will weigh everyday, but I believe regular weighing is important. We can't put our head in the sand.

The National Weight Registry- a long term study of people who have kept their weight off- shows one of the traits of successful maintainers is regular weighing.

I have struggled with and fought against being defined by this number my whole life.
I have written poems about it.
I was born at 8 pounds 2 ounces, and the doctor told my 17-year-old mother (who was already traumatized by gaining 60 pounds and losing her 19-inch waist), "Why, this is the fattest baby I've ever delivered." Many words were written in my little pink Home and Gardens baby book about my fatness, my laziness, and my gaining a pound a week despite puking up everything. You would think someone might have suspected "issues."
But no; I was put on a diet of one bottle per day at the age of 6 weeks old.

Remember when we stood in line to be weighed and the school nurse SHOUTED our weight to the recorder so that every other student in line could hear?
Remember the doctor insisting that you should weigh 124 pounds (which you did in the 4th grade!)?
Remember the insurance adjustor saying you may not be allowed on your husband's insurance because your weight was too high?
Remember the surgeon saying he probably could not perform your tubal laparoscopically because you were too fat?

My day of freedom arrived when I absent-mindedly wandered into a Diet Center and the woman there gave me an EEG which determined my lean muscle mass to be 155! "Your bones, muscle, and organs weigh that much. You cannot," she declared, "ever reasonably expect to weigh less than 165, probably 175." The moment of truth! I was vindicated! I now had a REASONABLE expectation, a REACHABLE goal.

Luckily and amazingly I do not suffer the same health issues as many of you: No high blood pressure or cholesterol; no diabetes, no other numbers to worry about getting down except that one on the scale. I am grateful each day that I am in such good health for a woman my age who has been obese most of her life. I do notice that my joints don't hurt as much. I do notice better mobility. I do notice that I sleep better.
Most of my health issues cleared up by eliminating wheat and refined carbs from my diet.
The rest is about my joints and my heart as I age.

I don't want to be attached to that number on the scale, just like I don't want to come from a family of addicts. But, sadly, that number has been a key defining feature of my identity my whole life. If ten years of psychotherapy did not get me past that, I'm probably not going to let go of it now. When I can't "feel" what's going on with my body, that number helps confirm what is going on. I hate it. I hate defining myself by it.

Part of this is lazy- it's the one number that specifically addresses our present state. Part of this is social, it's like our age, it's a common identifier.

I weigh myself weekly, except when I don't. I left my scale at home when I started a job in another city, so I would only weigh in on weekends. Then the wellness program provided a scale in our office and now I'm checking my weight a few times a week. The scale I have at home has a body mass reader that uses a hand held part as well as the feet. It's not like a body pod report but it shows trends and I like seeing my body fat % dropping from over 50%. I think a scale is great for trending. My weight should be TRENDING down. Not down only as I'm still going to retain fluids from time to time, but it should eventually keep going down if I'm doing everything right.