Weighing Yourself: How To Get Over the Drama [Ep. 14]

(disclaimer: transcript provided by AI. Please excuse any errors)

Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating.

Hey everyone. It's episode 14. We're going to be starting with a little bit of math and science here at the So stay with me because you're going to get a little rant from me after that. First though, I just want to remind you, I am still sending out Starbucks gift cards for reviews, and also now for shares. So I know was doing the drawing for the a Amazon gift card. We've given a couple of those away for shares, but instead of doing something where everybody has to do it and then hope to win, I just want to give you a little treat for every time that you share. So anytime that you share the podcast, just. Tag me in that, or if it's a review, go ahead and take a screenshot of that and send it to me on Instagram. Or you can email it to me. All of those links for finding me are in the show notes. So take screenshots, tag me in those things. And I just want to say thank you because I really am loving doing this and it's so fun to see how many people are listening and getting some value from this. And I just would really love to reach more people. So thanks again for all of those shares that you are doing and the reviews that you've already left.

Okay, let's jump in. Here's a little definition for you. The weight of an object is defined as the force of gravity on the object, and may be calculated as the mass times, the acceleration of gravity. That's written out as w=mg that's the formula for weight. According to the, um, explain that stuff website. I'm sure it's like super scientific, but I thought this was actually pretty clear. It says weight is a measurement of how much. The force of gravity acts on a given amount of mass. The force of gravity varies slightly all over earth. So while a lump of iron has the same mass, its weight varies. It might wait a little more in Bangladesh than it does in Tibet. What about on the moon? Gravity is about one six, the strength on the moon as it is on the earth. So things weigh only one sixth as much on the moon as they do on earth, even though their mass is exactly the same in both places. Why are things heavier on earth, essentially, because earth is so much more massive than the moon. It attracts objects with more force. And that gives them more weight.

Okay, interesting. Right. Mass weight, all of those things, but really what I'm wondering is how much do you weigh? Do you think of it in these scientific terms? Is your body weight, just the gravitational pull on the earth in the moment of time you last measured it.

Or when I asked you that question, how much do you weigh? Did you answer in your head with, well, it's way too much. Or it's never going to change. Or maybe even, I don't know, because I can't force myself to get on the scale. Unfortunately. Instead of thinking about our body weight in terms of math. We have decided that what's measured when we get on our bathroom scale is our worth. Our value, our beauty and our effort.

The scale does not measure any of those things. But I think for that reason, the scale has gotten a bad rap. I was scrolling Instagram recently, and I saw an influencer using a Sharpie on a bathroom scale in a hotel. And writing things like you don't need this and F this scale, and you're beautiful regardless of what you weigh. I think this just does a complete disservice. And I actually totally disagree with this point of view. Except of course. With the fact that you are beautiful regardless of what That is true. I don't disagree with that.

The problem I see here is that this influencer is saying, she's saying to the woman who gets on the scale, she's telling her that her efforts are not beautiful. She's telling her that if she wants to know the math of her situation, she's actually being dramatic and that she's wrong. If she just wants to know how her body is working. This influencer is telling the woman who is simply gathering information about her body, that she's doing it wrong. The thing is that we have very few external measuring devices for how our body is working. We can get blood work and urine tests, and I just did a stool test to screen for colon cancer. And we can do these kinds of things to see what's going on internally. But unless you're wearing some sort of continuous glucose monitor or something else, you just aren't. We just don't have a lot of tools to see what's going on and we don't do these things on a daily or weekly basis. We aren't even checking these kinds of things monthly. But if you want to know how certain foods affect your body, somehow we've been told by these so-called body positive influencers that checking your body, weight is wrong and unnecessary. And sometimes I even think they want me to feel bad for wanting to know this information. You know what my clients find useful from their scale weight. They find out which foods create water retention. They find out if what they're doing nutritionally is working and the way that they want it to. They learn that counting calories is not necessary for weight loss. They see that they can use their own body cues to tell them when to eat and when to stop. And it's super empowering to see the scale moving. When you are not depending on anyone else to tell you what to eat. When you've let Of the need to measure your food and count the macros or calories. And you still see the scale moving. It's actually super encouraging. They find out they can be trusted around food. But most importantly, my clients learn that the scale is a, not a measure of their worth. They actually get on the scale and just see the math of it. And they bring those numbers to the sessions and we talk about it Why did it go up? What foods are you eating that may be creating some water retention? For example, I had a client recently that was up something like three pounds overnight. And she was like, Hmm, what? What's happening? So we went through her food journal and notice what foods were likely causing her to retain water because really a jump of three pounds is not actually fat storage. That's not metabolically possible. It's very unlikely that you could eat enough food to maintain your needs for the day and then a surplus to account for storing three pounds of fat. So the truth is that eating more carbohydrates than what you're used to eating will cause you to retain water. Because it requires more water to digest carbohydrates, that's all that's happening. So in this particular case, she realized it was actually a sodium thing. She was retaining water because of the high sodium content of what was eaten that day. So the next week she came back and was like, oh yeah, that dropped off the next And it was no big deal for her. She didn't despair. When it went up, she just was like, Hey, this happened, what do you think. But that also means she didn't celebrate when it went down, because she was just thinking, this is my body doing exactly as it should. It knows what to do. It knows I needed extra water for this meal. And so it did just that. So she wasn't sure at first, which is why she brought it up with me, but after talking it through and really examining her food journal, she was like, oh yeah, it's obvious. Which again is another shameless plug for you to all be creating a food journal for yourselves. Whether you follow my 24 hour practical plan from episode two, or you are simply writing down what you ate at the end of the day. Remember that your food journal is the most important nutritional study you'll ever read. And this is one of the reasons when you know what you've eaten, you can easily see what is causing fluctuations on the scale. And then these fluctuations actually lose their dramatic power over The thing is that I teach my clients to weigh very frequently. No less than once per week and preferably every day I still do have some clients that resist this. Or honestly, just forget and that's fine. I don't push them, but my goal. Is to get them and you to realize that the scale. Actually has no power over your emotions. Here's what happens if you aren't working with a coach like If you are making efforts to lose weight and you step on the scale and you've lost weight. You're likely to say, Hey me, I deserve to celebrate. And then you might do that celebrating with extra food. You might also think, oh, okay, good. This is working. It's coming off easily so I can let up. Either way, this is not helpful. The other option is your weight goes up or maybe it just even stays the same and you think, oh crap, this isn't working. I'm not doing a good job. You know what helps those feel bad emotions. Some food. If you haven't cleaned up your thinking around the scale. I get that it can be detrimental to your efforts. I totally get that. It can derail If you are looking at that scale in the morning and your Are like all wrapped up in hoping against all hope that you'll see a certain number then. Yeah. Don't get on the scale. What I want you to do is to learn the scale is truly just the math of the situation. There's information. In fact, valuable information. To be learned from the scale. And that is how I want you to see If you constantly believed that the scale is evil and yet you want to lose weight. You will start to believe that wanting to lose weight is somehow also bad. If you believe these influencers that tell you to throw away your scale, you're worth more than that. You start to wonder if having the desire to lose weight is also somehow bad or wrong. I want to tell you that no. That desire is not wrong for you. It's not bad for you. If you want to lose weight. You can want to lose weight for whatever reason you have, you are valid. You are worth it. If it's a health matter, that's a good reason. If it's a looks matter, that's a good reason to, if you think it would just be fun. That's a good reason because if it's important to you, It's important. Period. I was looking at an old blog. I wrote when I was watching that show. This is us. I haven't watched it in a long time. So I don't really know where Kate is with her weight loss on that show because they depict her Uh, like weight loss efforts pretty consistently. But there's this episode. Um, awhile back where young Kate finishes a workout video, it's like some sweet eighties Jazzercise with her mom and she feels so good. You can tell she's like really feels accomplishment. She's got that on her face. And she heads to the bathroom. to check her weight. And she is so disappointed when she gets on the scale. She cannot understand why her weight didn't change with her awesome workout. She didn't know. That's not how it works. But then there's the real problem you can see. She attaches value to that number. She believes that her number is not right. That she is not right because of it. She believes that if she could be different, her life would be better somehow. She believes in this moment as many of us, that the number defines her. And I think this is true for a lot of us. I think this scene really stuck with me. Because it's a lot of how we grew up. We were taught that. are value was attached to that number. But what do you want to believe when you get on the scale? What do you believe right now? Let me tell you what I want you to believe when you get on the scale. This is the gravitational pull on my body at this moment in time. That's it. It is data. It is math. I know I've said that already here, but I really, really want you to understand that that is all it is. Also though I want you to believe that it's valuable, it's valuable data to get feedback on what's happening with your body. I want you to believe that it doesn't say anything at all about your value as a human being. It's just valuable math. I want you to weigh yourself frequently to get that data. What I don't want you to do is attach thoughts. Like I'm not successful at this, or I'll never be thin enough, or that number should be lower. That number on the scale is a circumstance. It's your thoughts about the number that are giving you the negative feelings. The scale doesn't actually have that much power. But you You have the power to create the thoughts you want to think. So, instead of thinking things like this is going to be awful and I hope the number is going to be quotE unquote, good I just want you thinking this is valuable data and information. The other reason, I know that the number on the scale is a circumstance and that it's your thoughts about it that are creating the problem. I have clients whose current weight is other clients goal weight. Do you hear that The number isn't actually giving you those negative thoughts. It's the thought that follows things like the numbers should be different. That's generally like the overarching theme of these kinds of thoughts. It's not the number. It's the thought that there is something wrong with you. Which by the way, of course. Is false Here's the thing though. I really, really want you to come at this weight loss from a place of self-love no one ever hates themselves thin. I mean, it happens, I guess. Don't don't ever say I'm saying, I don't want you to do it because it's not sustainable. And if you do hate yourself all the way down. You're going to keep right on hating yourself, even if you're at your goal weight. Why do you think people commonly gain their weight back? I think It's because they didn't learn to love themselves and they end up eating again to cover up how much they loathe being with their own company. Because frankly you are mean to yourself sometimes who wants to hang out with someone who hates us all day? Not me. If you believe that you will function in your life Easier with more energy. If you lose weight, then do it. And you know what tool you can use among many others. The bathroom scale. It's not evil. It's just math. I recommend you weigh yourself. First thing in the morning. After using the bathroom before you drink a lot of water and with either no clothes on or the same or similar pajamas every day, just for consistency. If you sometimes weigh after lunch and sometimes the weigh in the evening at the gym that's apples and oranges. Bathroom scales. Aren't exactly the most precise instruments on the planet. So you want to be as consistent as you can for your measurements. That means, make sure your scales on a hard surface and use the same one every time. Don't compare your weight at your house with your scale, with the weight at your mom's house, with her scale. They probably are calibrated slightly differently. So because the number on the scale is far less important than the movement and the rate of change. Okay. I feel like that was a long rant. I've just been thinking about this episode for a while and how to talk about scale, weight. I just really, really want you to know that the skill isn't evil. And if you want to lose weight, it's totally My clients often just say, I want to learn to take care of my body. In a way that shows love and compassion and honor And sometimes that care means you lose some body fat. You weren't doing that because you hate your body. You're doing Because you actually love your body. And you want to take care of her in the best way you can. You want to show her all the love put fuel in her that is going to make her function as best as you can. And you want her to have fun and also to live a long, long time. Okay. I just finished recording this and editing it. And I decided to pop in and add this one extra thing I want to give you the worksheet that my clients do for their scale weight. If they are having trouble with getting on the scale in the morning, if they notice all these thoughts that are keeping them from stepping on the scale or these kinds of things that are creating a lot of negative feelings. I have them print this out and have it ready in the bathroom in the morning so that they can just do some quick journaling. Basically. It's just a guided journaling page, but it's super cute. So I'm going to pop that in the show notes for you. If you want to download that and have access to a worksheet that I give exclusively to my clients. I decided I wanted to include that with this episode. So, all right. Talk to you next week. hey, thanks for listening today. If you're ready to get some personalized coaching from me, I'd encourage you to schedule a free strategy session. Visit www.wellwithlisa.as.me or it's easier just to find that link in the show notes. We'll talk about where you currently are with your weight loss goals. And I'll give you some actionable tools. You can start implementing right away. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you're learning something new and enjoying the podcast, I'd love for you to leave me a five star rating and a review. Thanks again for joining me, Lisa Salisbury in this episode of Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well.