Stop Letting Your Scales Change Your Mood

How often do you weigh yourself? Every morning? After every meal? How do you feel when you step on the scales? Nervous? Excited?

If you've put on weight you may feel dreadful, give yourself a good kick and then go and eat a tub of ice cream, a packet of chocolate biscuits or 3 packets of Maltesers. If you've lost weight you may feel you deserve a reward and go and eat a tub of ice cream, a packet of chocolate biscuits or 3 packets of Maltesers.

It does beg the question, why bother?

Now I am not saying the scales aren't one of the tools we have to measure our progress, and used correctly they are valuable.

So, you have put on weight is there really any need to give yourself a hard time and get mad at yourself? Will this mean that you will lose whatever weight you have put on? No, all it will do is waste your emotion on a fact you cannot change. Surely it is far more beneficial to look at what you can do differently in the future.

I don't believe we should be slaves to counting calories but just for moment consider this, if the scales have gone up by 4lbs from one day to the next do you really believe you have eaten an additional 14,000 calories in the past 24hours? (On average it takes an additional 3500 calories to gain a 1lb)

Your weight can fluctuate on a daily or even hourly basis for a number of factors, eating, drinking, exercising and unfortunately for ladies your monthly cycle also plays a part as you can retain water and therefore weigh more.

I used to weigh myself far to often until I realized what affect this had on my mood and therefore eating habits for the day. You do use scales as a guideline. My advice though is to use them once and only once a week, at the same time of day and the same day of the week. This will give you an accurate understanding of how things are going. And a longer time frame to realistically assess whether you have eaten a bit much or you are just holding excess water.

Your weight loss goals will be achieved by making the right food choices based on what fuel your body needs to be healthy. So, stop letting the scales dictate your mood and as a result your behaviour with food and start making healthy food choices based on what is good for your health and wellbeing.

I really enjoy working for Body Quest, a ladies only, quality weight loss camp in the UK. My job as the host means I get to meet so many people on their personal weight loss journey and help them in dropping a dress size at the fat camps.