No one will tell you when you need to lose weight. Creating a feedback system lets you know how you are really doing with your weight, so you can take corrective action sooner rather than later.

Weight gain happens so gradually that it’s easy to miss the pounds as they pile on. Imagine for a moment that you could notice almost immediately when you started gaining weight. Do you think that would help you stop? Do you think you could make some moves to lose what little you had gained?

That’s the idea behind creating a feedback system for yourself. Your feedback system alerts you to when you are gaining weight so you can immediately make counter moves. If you don’t know you are gaining then you can’t do anything about it, or at least you can’t act soon enough to prevent more.

People won’t tell you are gaining weight. You have to figure it out for yourself. Who would want to go up to another person and say: “Hey, I think you are gaining weight, you might want to watch that. Not me!

Most of us have been very successful at cutting out all feedback about our weight. We know how to ignore all mirrors. We know how to explain away larger clothes sizes. We know how to justify eating just one more helping.

Without feedback, one day you’ll just wake up and notice how much weight you have gained. You might be genuinely surprised at the amount of weight gain because you’ve been ignoring it.

What does feedback mean?

Feedback is information that tells you how you are doing on your diet and other goals.

Step on a scale every day and you have feedback on how your diet is doing. If your weight is just right, then nothing needs to be done. If it’s too high then something needs to be done. Once you get feedback that you are losing control of your weight, you know it’s time to take some sort of action to bring it back under control.

Weight isn’t the only or even the best form of feedback. If you gain muscle then your weight may go up. By only paying attention to your weight, you could be missing out on a lot of the excellent progress you are making.

Feedback Works, Please Don’t Skip It

You may be tempted to skip using feedback. It’s not very pleasant to think about your weight. You would probably just like to ignore it. The problem is, feedback works.

A University of Minnesota study showed, over a two year period, daily weighers lost twice the weight than those who weighed themselves weekly. This was 12 pounds on average compared to 6 pounds. Those who never weighed themselves gained 4 pounds on average.

In a study at Brown University Medical School, researchers found that people who have lost 10 percent or more of their body weight are more likely to avoid regaining 5 pounds or more if they weigh themselves regularly, especially daily. Sixty-one percent of those who weighed themselves daily maintained their loss within a 5-pound range after a year and a half. Most dieters, according to the researchers, regain a third of their loss within a year, two-thirds within two years.

So, feedback works. Feedback acts as a psychological barrier you must break through before you can regain weight. While your preferred form of feedback may not be the scale, your chances of staying on your diet are much better if you create some form of a feedback system for yourself.

Creating Your Feedback System Step-by-Step

The steps to creating your feed back system are:

1.      Select your feedback strategies.

2.      Track your progress.

Step 1: Select Your Feedback Strategies

There are quite a few possible forms of feedback. The options are divided into daily, weekly, and as-needed strategies.

Daily Feedback Strategies

The daily feedback strategies are something you can do easily every day with minimal effort. The daily feedback part of the Designer Way needs to be as quick and painless as possible or people won’t do it. They are like an early warning system. If you detect a weight gain with these strategies, then you can immediately take corrective action rather than wait until the next spin.

Some possible feedback strategies are:

·        Clothing size and the fit of your clothes. When your clothes start to get tight, it’s a good clue you are gaining weight.

·        Look at yourself the mirror. This feedback strategy works best if you’re naked. By looking at yourself you can usually tell if you are gaining weight. It’s easy enough to do right before you take a shower.

·        Try on a belt. If you usually wear lose fitting clothes then you can try on a belt every morning when you get up. If the belt doesn’t fit well, then you know you are gaining weight. One study found people who tied a cord around their waist were successful at keeping their weight off because the cord would become tighter as they gained weight, which would alert them and they could make changes.

·        Total body weight. This is weighing yourself on your home scale. Please see the entry under Weekly Feedback Strategies for the complete explanation.

·        Weight Angel. Researchers have found that if you weigh yourself every day, email in your weight, and then get advice and feedback on how you are doing, you are far more likely to maintain your weight loss. It turns out, the more you bug people and keep them thinking about their weight, the more likely they are to keep the weight off.

As long as your approach is quick and easy, you can use it as a daily feedback strategy.

Weekly Feedback Strategies

Feedback strategies are in the weekly category because they are either a lot more work or they might be too psychologically counterproductive to perform daily.

Some possible weekly feedback strategies are:

·        Total body weight. This is weighing yourself on your home scale. Your weight changes so much on a day-to-day basis that it can be very depressing for a lot of people. Weighing weekly may be less traumatic. If weighing yourself daily isn’t something that would bother you then you can make a daily weigh-in part of your daily feedback strategies.

·        Photograph. Taking a picture of yourself allows you to see yourself as others see you. I know, I didn’t want to see myself either, but it is a very powerful form of feedback. A picture is worth a thousand words. These days with digital cameras, taking pictures has never been easier.

·        Body Measurements. Total body weight can hide your progress with your weight lifting and cardio program efforts. To get a different perspective on how your body is doing, take regular measurements of your chest, waist, hip, bicep, thigh, forearm, and calf. The downside of this choice is that taking measurements the same way every time is hard for a lot of people.

·        Weight lifting and cardio workout results. Keep track of the pounds, repetitions, and sets you are performing in your workouts. Even if you aren’t losing weight as fast you hope, you may still be getting stronger and healthier.

·        Body fat percentage. This is a measure of your actual body fat percentage. Tracking this figure helps you know if your weight is going down slowly because you are gaining muscle. When you don’t see the scale moving, this can be comforting information. There are a number of ways of calculating your body fat percentage: looking at yourself, measuring tape, BMI, bioimpedence, calipers, hydrostatic tank, and DEXA scanning. We’ve talked about some of these methods already, but many are too complex for us to cover here. You can find out more information on calculating your body fat percentage at http://YourDesignerDiet.com.

Many of the weekly feedback strategies would work great with a personal trainer. Every week you could meet with your trainer who could do all the hard work of measuring your body fat percentage and weighing you. You could then talk about nutrition, exercise, and anything else that might help you.

As-Needed Feedback Strategies

Implement these feedback strategies when you think the time is right. Each different strategy explains when the time may be right for you.

·        Count calories consumed. Track exactly how many calories you eat each day. This is as-needed because counting calories is a lot of work. It’s used when you are trying to learn your portion sizes or when checking if you are meeting your calorie deficit from eating less goal.

·        Count calories burned from exercise. Track exactly how many calories you burn each day from exercise. It’s used when checking if you are meeting the calorie deficit from exercise goal.

·        Other people’s opinions. It’s unlikely, but is there someone you would trust to give you feedback on your weight? Just don’t hold it against them if they tell you the truth!

Which strategies look good to you?

If you don’t have any strong opinions, I recommend a mix of feedback strategies like:

1.      Daily weigh-in.

2.      Look at yourself in the mirror.

3.      Track weight lifting and cardio workout results.

4.      Count calories consumed and calories burned from exercise when necessary.

This combination of strategies gives you a wide range of feedback on how you are doing. If you just use weight alone, then you risk getting down on yourself when your weight doesn’t change even when you are doing everything right.

You are not a machine. Even if you do everything perfectly, you can’t guarantee a certain amount of weight loss every day or even every week. Weight is just weird that way. Sometimes you may not lose weight even though you have created the mathematically correct calorie deficit. It’s incredibly frustrating because it’s at these times you start doubting yourself, start thinking you can’t lose weight so why bother?

Hang in there and keep using The Designer Way and you will eventually see progress with your weight. It’s not easy. Those horrible and unexplainable weight plateaus are brutal on your self-confidence. Have some faith. You will make progress if you do the right things, constantly adjusting your strategies to get better at sticking to your diet, eating less, and preventing slip-ups.

Using several forms of feedback helps you deal with those periods when your weight is not going down like you think it should. If you are taking body measurements, perhaps your weight is steady but your waist is getting smaller. Or perhaps you see that you are using heavier weights or you are walking at a higher level on your treadmill.

All of these are examples of positive feedback. Just because your weight isn’t dropping doesn’t mean you aren’t doing good things.

Daily Weigh-ins Aren’t For Everyone

Some people simply can’t handle daily weigh-in sessions. A bad number on the scale in the morning can ruin the entire day. If you are one of these people, you may want to go extreme and stay off the scale.

People are psychologically looking for big changes in their weight when they step on the scale. The problem is, because they’ve been doing everything right they often expect a big weight loss, but instead they see a big weight gain. This can be extremely frustrating and demotivating.

Your weight fluctuates daily due to changes in water retention and menstrual cycle. You can gain between 2-5 pounds in a day just from water retention. And every pound gained on the scale doesn’t mean you’ve gained a pound of fat.

Your weight will go up sometimes, go down fast at other times, or sit at a plateau for what seems like forever. If you can’t handle the roller-coaster ride of the scale then you may want to consider using other forms of feedback.

People struggling with depression are often advised to stay away from the scale, because it can be a source of even more negative thoughts.

People with eating disorders are also advised to stay away from the scale because they often weigh themselves compulsively, obsessing over every small change in weight.

You don’t need to weigh yourself daily to be successful. Other feedback options will work well too, as I’ve already said is my case. If you are going to weigh yourself daily, be very sensitive to your weight loss patterns. If your goal is to lose one pound a week, probably no one in the world will lose 0.15 pounds a day. You’ll lose it clumps. Some people will lose weight in smaller, more frequent clumps. Some people will lose their weight in larger, less frequent clumps.

How do you lose weight? Be sensitive to your particular pattern and don’t get down on yourself when your weight loss isn’t happening as fast or in the way you would like it to. We all want our weight to come off predictably, but that’s not the way weight loss works. Maintain your calorie deficit by using The Designer Way and the weight will come off. Keep in mind that as you get closer to your target weight, you start losing weight more slowly. Don’t get down on yourself then either. Just keep up the good work and good things will happen.

Tips for Weighing Yourself

For you to be able to compare your weight from day to day and week to week, you need to weigh yourself the same way every time. Here are a few tips:

·        Only weigh yourself first thing in the morning after using the toilet.

·        Use the same scale at the same time of day, wearing exactly the same clothes.

·        You can’t weigh yourself after each meal to see how much weight you’ve gained or after exercise to see how much weight you’ve lost. It takes time for changes to be seen in your body.

·        Put the scale on a flat, hard surface to get a good reading.

·        If you are using your scale’s built-in body fat calculator, then be sure to input all the information it asks for (height, sex, etc). Body fat calculations from scales aren’t very accurate. They can fluctuate just like weight. Use them merely as a general trend of how you are doing. Don’t expect the number to be your true body fat percentage.

Step 2: Track Your Progress

A lot of people encourage you to keep detailed records on your weight so you can create all sorts of nice graphs and charts. If that’s what you want to do then please go ahead. There are many good software programs available to help you.

But I don’t recommend you keep a record of all your feedback data. Why not?

Collecting and tracking information is a hassle. And the more hassle a process is, the less likely you are to do it. I don’t want the spin to be a hassle. I want you to feel that the small amount of effort you need to put into each spin is worth the results.

Detailed records of your weight are great when you are doing well and your weight is falling. But when weight goes up, those graphs can cause a lot of heartache and bad feelings. You may not want to risk possible depression by looking at your weight history if the history doesn’t help you enough to justify collecting it.

Here’s all the information you need:

·        Feedback data from the beginning of the spin.

·        Feedback data at the end of the spin.

That’s it. With just one week’s worth of information, you can make plans for what to do in the next spin. You don’t need a lot of history. You just need a one week view showing how you are doing this week compared to last week. If you can keep getting better and better each week, then you will eventually reach your long term weight goal. It’s pretty simple.

Definitely use a software program when counting calories. Calorie counting is a complicated job that is made much simpler that way. You probably won’t be counting calories for the rest of your life. Calorie counting becomes less important once you learn proper portion sizes.

Feedback strategies must be simple and quick, because you’ll use them for your entire life. If you like detailed records and they work for you then please use them. Some people feel they must track every detail or they aren’t doing it right. I just want to let people know you can do perfectly well with a much simpler approach. Remember, whatever works.

People are Sources of Ideas, Not Points of Comparison

Imagine you are talking with someone and they gush over a new diet they are on and they aren’t hungry at all eating only 1200 calories a day. And you remember how you were thinking of food 25 hours a day when you were only eating 1200 calories a day.

What should you do? Should you:

1.      Suck it up and eat a lot fewer calories because someone else can do it?

2.      Turn bitter and jealous over their good fortune?

3.      Do nothing. They are different from you so you can’t expect what works for them to work for you.

If you answered (3) then congratulations, you are right...and unfortunately you only win the warm glow of self-satisfaction. If you didn’t get the right answer here’s why doing nothing is the right answer when something works for another person and not for you: everyone is different.

If you get down on yourself because you are hungry and someone else isn’t, then that’s the same as being depressed because you aren’t as tall or have a different hair color from them. Does that make any sense? No, it doesn’t.

That’s why: people are sources of ideas, not points of comparison. If someone is using a strategy that looks good to you, then give it a go. If it works for you, great! If it doesn’t work then no harm done. Just move on to the next strategy. But if a strategy doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t mean you are broken and the other person is a hero. It just means that this strategy doesn’t work for you. Some strategies will work for you and that’s all you need to succeed.

By creating a feedback system, you are taking advantage of a powerful and proven method of controlling your weight. Just keep your system simple and quick. It will reward you by helping you control your weight until the day you die.