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Your Daily Weigh-In Ritual

Hey Brothers!

Welcome to the LenDentonThrive Letter!

I’m on a mission to help guys over the age of 50 get lighter, stronger, and live longer. We do that by building healthy, sustainable lifestyles. I call it the ThriveLife! And, I write this newsletter to share strategies and tips to help you build your own, custom ThriveLife.

Hey… What did you weigh this morning?

Is that a strange question?

Most of us Over-50 Guys can’t answer that question. A lot of us don’t want to even think about that question! 

But, managing your weight is an important part of building a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. So, in this week’s LenDentonThrive Letter, I hope to convince you that you need your own personal Daily Weigh-In Ritual.

When I started my ThriveLife journey more than 10 years ago, my doctor told me that I needed to lose 40 pounds. 

Up until that time, I hardly ever weighed myself. I think that was mostly because I knew that the results would be bad news and I didn’t really want to know how overweight I was. 

But, my “scale avoidance” ended when I started my ThriveLife. That’s because I had learned through my business experiences that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” [1] 

I knew this was true in the business world, so I just assumed that it might also be true for me on my fitness journey. And, fortunately for me, it did turn out to be true.  I actually lost 70 pounds in 7 months, and my daily weigh-ins were a key element of that success!

What is a Daily Weigh-In Ritual?

When you’re trying to lose weight and build a healthy lifestyle, your weight should be one of your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). The ThriveLife is built on smart daily practices. And, the daily weigh-in ritual is just one of these essential daily practices. 

Let’s not overcomplicate things. It’s just a weigh-in! But, our weight varies throughout the day. So, if you weigh yourself at different times of the day, your measurements have a lot of variability, making it difficult to tell if you’re making any progress. 

The key is consistency. 

For a daily weigh-in to be most effective, you need to do it the same way, every day. That means using the same scale, at around the same time of day, under the same conditions.

As an example, here’s a quick summary of my daily weigh-in ritual:

• Weigh first thing every morning

• On the same digital scale

• Before consuming any food or drink

• Wearing skivvies or less (oops, there goes my PG rating!)

• Record the results in my fitness app (more on that in a minute…)

I’ve been doing this ritual every day for the last 10 years, except on travel days. (A few years ago, I took a 3-week cross-country RV trip. I packed my digital scale and did my weigh-in ritual every day while I was on the road.)  

Your weigh-in ritual might look different, based on your specific needs and schedule. The key is to do it with consistency. 

The Benefits of a Daily Weigh-In Ritual

I have found that there’s a lot of psychological power in my daily weigh-in ritual. 

The process of becoming more fit and healthy is a deliberate act of behavior change. We replace bad habits with healthy habits that allow us to become healthier over time.   

Repetition is an important part of forming new habits. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, says: “every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

With that in mind, here are three key benefits I believe forming a daily weigh-in ritual will create for you:

1. Accountability - doing daily weigh-ins is a simple way to hold yourself accountable for your fitness commitments. Each weigh-in is a vote for the healthier you! Think this: “The new, fitter me checks my weight daily.” 

2. Connects Behaviors to Outcomes - “Today’s plate is tomorrow’s weight.” While this is a bit of a generalization, it's still an effective accountability tool that you can use to shape your new, healthier behaviors. From my personal experience, I am more mindful of what I eat today knowing that I will be stepping on the scale tomorrow morning. 

3. Shapes Your Behavior (Visual) - Recording and reviewing your weigh-in results visually has real power in helping you to become the fitter version of yourself. I’ve put that visualization power to work in my ThriveLife, and you can do the same. Here’s how:

• Record every weigh-in in your chosen fitness app. I’ve used Fitbit for the last ten years. (Other apps like MyFitnessPal have similar capabilities.)

• Review the Weight Graph every day. An example Fitbit Weight Graph (not mine) is shown below.

• This graph shows two important things. First, the actual weigh-in numbers are shown in white. As you’d expect, the weigh-in numbers vary from day-to-day. The weight trend-line is shown in blue. 

• Focus your attention on the trend line. You want that trend line going DOWN!

• Focusing on this trend line every day tells your brain that this is important. Your brain takes over from there to “solve the equation” to make that trend line move in your desired direction. You’ll start thinking about the trend line when making decisions about food and exercise. So, the trend line starts to affect your decisions to move the trend down. It’s not magic. It’s neuroscience.

This daily, visual connection to my weight trend line is a critical part of my daily weigh-in ritual. It's a powerful daily mental reinforcement of what I’m working to achieve.

I hope that I’ve convinced you that developing a daily weigh-in ritual is a simple, yet powerful daily practice that can help you achieve your weight loss and fitness goals. And, adding the visual element of reviewing your weight trend line will engage your brain and amplify the effect and your results.  

I recommend the daily weigh-in ritual to every Over-50 Guy who’s interested in building his ThriveLife.

Thanks for stopping by. 

[1] This quote is attributed to W. Edward Demming

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