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| Badger’s daily moment of zen is somewhat different |
For almost thirty days in a row, my post-wee, daily weigh-in has showed the same numbers. This has been met with a whispered ‘fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou’ from moi. Because I am running 20km a week and I am having a serious love affair with vegetables (the European zucchini harvest makes me swoon) and I feel so good about my body and my head space around this and WHY WON’T THE BASTARD NUMBERS SODDING WELL MOVE?!
The last few days I have been at home nursing a temp and sore throat. Daily movement has involved less that a dozen stair climbs. So of course today shows a two pound reduction. FINALLY.
When I was eating without thinking, I hated the scales. Hated the numbers going up and up seemingly beyond my control. As they increased I felt exponentially less-than. They were measurable evidence of my shame. The numbers made me feel like a fraud: I was able to manage complex and risky change projects worth millions of pounds, and have difficult conversations with people at all levels of an organisation every day. But I could not do a thing to alter my own body. So I chucked the scales out and felt quietly smug that those bad boys would never darken my door again.
When I decided to understand why my relationship with my body was so broken, I felt I needed empirical data, free of the emotional turmoil I was walking through. But the whole purpose of this was to STOP feeling bad about myself. The scales and their Tales of Woe felt like a exercise in compulsive self-harming. And then Mr P’s undergraduate studies in the social sciences finally proved worthwhile! He found research from the University of Minnesota that found adults who weighed themselves daily while trying to lose weight, lost 12 pounds in two years, whereas people who weighed themselves weekly lost six. The daily weighers also had less of a tendency to regain their weight.
Bolstered by The Science I committed to weigh myself once, everyday. And it has proved fascinating. I know that in the days before my ‘Lady Moontime’ I put on a couple of pounds, but first sight of a bloody gusset and they disappear (probably water retention), the numbers tend to stay the same until Friday or Saturday and then change. Eating carbs after 5pm, or less red meat, or exercising more does not impact the rate at which I lose AT ALL. I look for an overall trend rather than obsessing about individual days. And so while this month of plateauness has been frustrating, I have been able to talk myself through it.
I have become super attuned to the rhythms of my body through this daily practice; it is a reminder that I am honouring my promise to myself to embrace kindness and curiosity in getting healthy.
What is your relationship to the scales? Do you weigh yourself?
At most once a month.
I have always avoided the scales altogether except when dieting, and sometimes even then, as I find it very difficult to confront the numbers! These days though, I am on a journey towards better health, trying to avoid the word diet altogether, and allowing myself small treats here and there, weighing weekly and trying not to beat myself up with the numbers. I am following a mostly low-glycaemic plan, and my ME/CFS has improved enormously, making me realise I probably had blood sugar issues as well and didn’t realise it.
As of this week, I have lost 9lbs in about ten weeks or so, including a week when I lost 3lbs (and didn’t feel I deserved to) and other weeks when I have stuck to plan and lost nothing.
I am fascinated by the idea that weighing daily may help to keep me more on track in the long term, I may well give this a go!
the word ‘diet’ doesn’t work for me either (does it work for anyone?!)
so great that you are seeing improvements in your ME through a more aware way of being in your body – fascinated to know if the daily weigh-in helps – keep in touch!
I never weigh myself. I’ve never owned scales. My mother has the world’s most confident body image (TM) and so I didn’t even grow up with scales.
The only time I get weighed is at the hospital when my hole-riddled bones are being scanned. Apparently I weigh “more than I look”. Whatever that means. Presume it’s all those side planks….
I refuse to own a set of scales as the temptation will be too great to get on them. So while i’ve been consciously trying to lose a few pound these last few months i’ve been weighing myself when i visit my sister — roughly once a month. It’s been great to get a different reading each time — feels more like an achievement than if i was posed over the scales watching for every gram to vanish. works for me, anyways :)
* poised
quite enjoying the image of you posed on the scales…
When I left home the first time at 18, I took the bathroom scale with me, the one I’d weighed myself on since I was old enough to consider doing such a thing. I am now 44, and I still have that scale, still weigh myself with it. I don’t trust other scales, they don’t know me like she does, and even though I know that with age and proximity her numbers, her perception of me is most likely distorted, we have been loyal to each other all this time, and it’s no longer about the numbers, but rather about trusting that you’ll be told the truth, the whole heart truth, and that it doesn’t matter as long as you care for yourself, are healthy, are truly full and well-fed. Or at least, that’s what I try to tell myself while in the background I hear “fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou.”
love!
Wow. This is all so fascinating — both the research and what you’ve shared of your practices.
I’ve been in such a weird place with my body the last 6 years, and it’s only been the start of 2012 that I’ve really begun to address it. The progress is slow, but it’s happening.
Just in this last month, I’ve begun to weigh myself in a routine. I created a handy little exercise tracking worksheet that I’ll print out at the start of each month. There’s a place for me to track my exercise each weekday, and I weigh myself on Mondays and write the number to the left of that week on the worksheet. I’m hoping over time to see the numbers go down and my exercise performance to go up. We shall see how it goes.
slow i my experience, is the best – and tracking what i eat and the exercise i am doing has been enormously helpful – not in and of itself, but because i am so much more aware, conscious, mindful.
i love looking back on those early days when i could jog for 30 seconds between walks of 2 minutes, i thought i was in danger of dying from an exploded lung! seeing where i am now makes me feel a weeny bit invincible :)
I HATE the scale. I hate the fact that the numbers would/could be such a determinant in how I feel about myself. I believe in being healthy and fit (and have a ways to go in that realm) but think that society puts far too much esteem in numbers, weight, dress size to name two.
Fabulous tho’ that you are running 20 k per week.
i totally understand that feeling – and that all the numbers somehow determine our value that we can then be judged against.
what i have found is that letting go of the emotion attached to the numbers helps me use the numbers to help me – they are now just sources of data that keep me centered and present in my body.
I don’t like the whole every day weighing business. It was something i used to do when I was obsessing daily about food and rather miserable.
I like to see how my jeans fit.
once a week for me to weigh is good.
i can see a time when i am in my ‘optimal healthy zone’ where i will be doing the same :)
i love how you’re learning to look at overall trends, not focusing on individual days. and so good the kindness you’re practicing with your body.
me and scales? i hate them…but i step on one every day.
I just found your blog, and I feel like crying “where have you been all my life”! Ok, well, maybe not quite that dramatic, but you rock! Found you via the magic of Dietgirl, and I love your take on all the more important bits of life whilst trying to be healthy too. Being happy is such a damn hard thing to figure out, and yet so easy if you just let it happen … confusing! Anyhoo – yay for finding your musings. For my sins, I’m a dedicated daily weigher, have been for years, apart from the times I go travelling when I suddenly discover that actually I’m quite good at self-regulating when I need to be! But then, when you’re in a beautiful foreign country who needs to stuff their face constantly when there’s so much to see and experience???
And for the record, I think Badger’s version of zen is oddly similar to mine :o) Sue
Sue! How lovely to see your comment pop up.
I have had a secret Ladycrush on Shauna for years – she’s aces – even though she’s Australian :)
Badger has many lessons to teach us all.
x