When it’s time to stop weighing yourself!
This week I wanted to talk about how you can tell when it’s time to stop weighing yourself (coz it makes you feel like shit!).
You can watch the video I made on this below. Or keep scrolling if you’d rather read the blog.
The scales are just a tool.
Let’s start by talking about how the scales are just a tool. Weighing yourself can be helpful if you want to measure your progress when you’re changing habits. Maybe you’ve got a target weight you wanna get back down to. You wanna review your progress and check that those habits you’re changing are actually making a difference. That’s when the scales can be useful. As long as you’re looking at them as just a tool!
Unfortunately it’s really easy to start attaching too much meaning to the number on the scales. Often when I work with clients one-to-one, we actually agree not to look at their weight. They’ve been on all the diets, they’ve been to all the slimming clubs and that’s left them really fixated on the number on the scales – and not in a good way! It can become like an obsession.
Focus on other ways to measure your progress.
Focus on the habits you want to create. I always think this is better than weighing-in anyway – if you focus on the habits, the results will show up eventually. I might get clients to look at focusing on how they feel instead or you could watch out for releasing habits that you want to break-free from.
Here are three signs that it might be time for you to stop weighing yourself:
Sign #1 – You attach your self-worth to the number on the scales
This is when you see yourself as a failure as a person or a success as a person, depending on the number that you see on the scales. You think that you’re ‘good enough’ when you’re losing weight or when you’re at your target weight. But if you’re not losing weight or you’re gaining weight, or you’re not the weight that you want to be, you think you’re not good enough. You beat yourself up and you think that you’re a failure as a person. If you’re really down on yourself depending on your weight, then that’s a really good sign it’s time to stop weighing yourself.
Instead focus on loving yourself first. You need to love yourself regardless of what weight or size you are. Your body deserves love, respect and to be valued at any size or weight. You don’t NEED to change, you’re good enough as you are.
Sign #2 – Your happiness depends on what your weight is doing
Does this sound familiar? You look at the number on the scales and your day is either made or ruined depending on what the number is. Whatever your weight is doing determines whether or not you’re having a good day… This gives me massive alarm bells! It should be ringing alarm bells for you too! Don’t let the scales dictate your mood!
Remember the scales are just a tool to see what’s going on in your body. There’s loads of things going on that can affect your body weight. It can be about your fluid balance, whether you’ve been to the toilet or not, whether you’ve had a meal or a drink or not recently. Your weight goes up and down, all day, everyday. This is why I recommend only weighing yourself once a week maximum (if you’re going to use the scales). Then don’t look at that individual number, look at the overall trend week to week. Don’t let the number on the scales dictate how you feel, because it’s just a number.
Your happiness is way too important to be attaching it to the number on the scales. Be kind to yourself instead of letting your day get ruined just because the number on the scales isn’t what you expected. It could just be a bit of a blip anyway! Sometimes if you’ve been making changes there can be a delayed reaction before the results show – another reason to focus on habits long-term rather than the results!
Sign #3 – You’re only concerned about the results.
Do you only care about losing weight regardless of how you achieve it? You only care what the scales tell you, you don’t care how you get there… I hear a lot of people say things like “just tell me what to do, I don’t care what I do, I just need to lose weight!” Or “I’ll do anything to get the weight off!” Again this gives me alarm bells! Coz you should actually want to make the changes that you’re going to make to get to your target weight. Whatever you do to lose weight you gotta do forever. If you don’t wanna make those changes then you’re going to find it really hard to keep it going forever.
Then if ‘doing anything to get there’ means unhealthy things like you skip meals or restrict and deprive yourself. That is a slippery slope to disordered eating. It’s a slippery slope to building a really shitty relationship with food. You start by depriving yourself, thinking you’re doing the right thing and you’re being good. Then you have cravings, because you’re cutting out all the things that you love. Then when you have the food you love (coz you will eventually!) you feel guilty. You feel rubbish, you think you’ve failed and you end up bingeing and feeling worse. Before you know it you’re stuck going round and round in circles of depriving yourself then bingeing. It’s a shitty place to be in.
Do yourself a favour – if you realise that all you’re concerned about is results, forget weighing yourself!
Three signs it’s time to stop weighing yourself:
- You attach your self-worth to the number on the scales.
- Your happiness depends on what your weight is doing.
- You’re only concerned about the results, regardless of what you do to get there.
If any of those sound familiar to you, I would say it’s time to ditch the scales. Instead focus on building healthy habits and forget what your weight is doing. Try to focus on eating well and moving regularly in order to feel good and enjoy your life.
If you’re not sure where to start making changes to your eating habits, check out my guide to healthy eating for how to make it easy for yourself. It’s so much easier to focus on making your meals well-balanced then the rest slots into place. Focus on the habits and you’ll get the results eventually.
Ditch dieting forever, you deserve better.
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My Weekly Round-up! AKA; what I’ve been up to recently…
- Tea of the week has been Earl Grey, but I’ve finally got round to ordering some Earl Grey Vanilla! Can’t wait for it to arrive – yum.
- Been keeping up my walks down by the brook almost every day again this week. Plus I’ve still been doing pretty well with doing my exercise routine and a short yoga video almost every day too. It’s definitely been making a difference to my back.
- It was mine and Sam’s wedding anniversary last week. I can’t believe we’ve been married for 16 years now – the time has whizzed by. We celebrated with a child-free night out to try a new restaurant in town. We’ve enjoyed food from them quite a few times before when they used to be called ‘Hoke Poke’ and only offered Poke Bowls for delivery. Now they’re called Kanu Poke and have added other options to the menu. The food was delicious and we both enjoyed it all, will definitely be going back! I had a ‘bubble waffle’ with faux chicken, ‘Mexicana’ style. It’s kind of hard to describe as it combined sweet and savoury, but it was so good. Plus my pudding was purple! It was made from a Filipino yam called an ube – well worth googling photos as they’re an amazing shade of purple!
- Other than our meal out, it’s been a bit of a quiet week. I’ve been doing a bit of decluttering and sorting stuff. Plus planning what I want to achieve this year, mainly stuff I want to sort round the house so far!
- We haven’t been on any more family walks to add to this year’s ’23 Walks in 2023′ family challenge, so hoping to squeeze one in either this weekend or next.
- Bird Nerd Report: This week has been all about the long-tailed tits again – I’m sure I’ve seen loads of them on every single walk down by the brook. Also I keep seeing a massive buzzard and one day there was a little goldcrest again.
