Why it's time to let go of the number on the scales - and what to focus on instead

Why it's time to let go of the number on the scales - and what to focus on instead

Sarah Grant
Food Freedom, Intuitive eating, Public health policy, Health At Every Size

I wonder how many people start their days by the weighing themselves… Do they look forward to stepping on the scales, or do they dread it? Does the number they see change how they feel about themselves? Does it impact the course of the rest of the day?

Some believe weighing-in regularly is a powerful tool to help motivate behaviours that support weight-loss, and others believe it can promote poor mental wellbeing and disordered eating habits.

Having spent the past ten years working in nutrition, I’ve learned a lot about health and eating behaviour. I understand that why, how and what we eat can be entangled with the relationship we have with our body. When a client I’m working with wants to find real peace in their relationship with food and turn their focus on to health-promoting habits, then exploring and potentially loosening the grip of entrenched beliefs about body weight is often part of the work.

Here is why I started encouraging my clients at Gut Reaction to ditch the scales – and what to do instead.

Why do we weigh ourselves?

Let’s start with why people weigh themselves at all, and I believe this typically boils down to a couple of core reasons: One is they care about our appearance and associate that with body weight. The second is because of concerns regarding their health, and viewing weight as a marker of health. In both cases, the scales are usually there to tell us if they’re ‘on top of things’ and keep a tab on whether the action they’re taking to lose weight or maintain a lower body weight is ‘working’.

So, first let’s explore whether a narrow focus on losing weight for health is the good idea many believe it to be.

Weighing in on Weight as an indicator of health

Whilst working as a nutritional therapist, I’ve always been passionate about helping people find meaningful, manageable ways to enhance their nutrition in to support their health.

Like many health professionals, for years I believed that a slimmer body that fitted a certain category on the BMI scale was categorically a healthier one. But is it possible this isn’t always true? Is it possible the medical system has put too much emphasis on body weight/BMI as an indicator of health?

Over the past five or six years learning about Intuitive Eating and the research around dieting and disordered eating, it became very apparent that when it comes to unlocking true thriving health (and wellbeing), striving to reach or maintain an ideal body weight isn’t necessarily the key to success it is widely believed to be.

Here are some of the reasons why:

  1. Yes, there are a host of health issues associated with high weight (BMIs) but there is also a lot of inadequate science around this that still needs working through -correlation doesn’t prove causation.
    Take pre-diabetes for example, is the higher body weight seen in some pre-diabetic patients the cause of insulin resistance or more accurately another symptom of a dysregulated metabolism? If the aetiology of pre-diabetes doesn’t stem from increased body fat, as many experts now argue it doesn’t, then is targeting fat the solution? The same line of questioning applies to PCOS and most chronic conditions.
    Of course, there may be a line where higher body fat could become problematic health-wise for an individual, perhaps putting an extra strain on the body’s structure and systems. And following that line of thought, I can totally understand why focussing on losing weight might appear to be the logical intervention, but please read on to see why it may not be quite that simple before making your mind up on this. In summary, my view is that more research is required before pitching weight-loss dieting as a health panacea.

  2. Even if body weight is a factor in health, your weight/BMI doesn’t dictate your whole health. In reality, health is far more complex than that.
    This is important because losing weight or maintaining a lower body weight doesn’t automatically make someone healthy or resolve all heath issues. Again, take the example of a prediabetes - one of the standard recommendations given in the UK is to lose weight, but there are many ways to lose weight, not all healthy, and isn’t what’s really important to the health outcomes of someone who wants to address prediabetes is that they learn how to balance their blood sugar effectively, develop a healthy relationship with food and build health enhancing habits? So why not directly target their health, rather than their weight?

  3. BMI is a deeply outmoded, flawed model and we now have many better ways to assess health.
    It is now widely recognised the the BMI scale is simplistic and misleading - please read this to find out more about BMI. Is it time that more emphasis went towards other measures of health (a little more on this below)?

  4. Body weight is complex and whilst we are led to believe as individuals we hold the personal power to manipulate our weight at will, the reality for most people is very different.
    In order to build understanding of the complex systemic structure of obesity and inform UK policy, in 2007 the UK Government’s Foresight Programme distilled an obesity map mapping over 100 factors that determine body weight. With societal influences, biology, food production and environment all playing major determining roles, perhaps surprisingly few of the identified factors were within full control of the individual, such as ‘eating too much and sitting on the sofa’. 
    Of course our bodies can and often do change shape and size when we are looking after them diffently, but if you have ever tried to channel efforts into losing weight by following a restrictive regime or diet, then please compassionately remind yourself that weight is not all about calories in and out - it is complex.

COULD focussing on the number of the scales be undermining health, not building it?

Ultimately losing weight for health purposes is a personal decision and I believe in body autonomy, but hopefully you can see why I believe that using weight as a proxy for health, or the presentation of weight loss as the sole route to health, is flawed thinking, and why I’d love to see our cultural definition of health become broader and more holistic.

Another concerning thread to this story is the mounting evidence suggesting that society’s fixation on weight loss, whether it’s for aesthetic or health reasons, can do more harm than good to individual health.

A growing body of research highlights the many issues with weight-loss/dieting as a healthcare intervention. The potential negative consequences for health that can stem from weight-loss/dieting span the physical and mental health spectrum, including long-term weight gain, disordered eating habits, food obsession, body dissatisfaction to serious eating disorders. And is it not ironic there is emerging evidence that weight stigma and weight cycling can explain most if not all of the associations we see between higher weights and poor health outcomes?

With all of this in mind, do we really need scales in our homes tinkering with our mood, influencing our habits each day and interfering with our intuition? For me, the scales tend to represent the ultimate symbol of diet culture! So, for most of the people that I work with at Gut Reaction, my answer is no.

If you don’t weigh yourself, then what?

You may be wondering, how are you supposed to know if how you’re caring for your body is ‘working’ if you don’t know how much you weigh. 

There are many markers of health (and wellbeing) that are relatively easy to check or keep tabs on, some subjective and about how we feel, and some which can be measured. Here are just a few:

  • Energy levels

  • Blood sugar

  • Gut health (e.g regular bowel movements)

  • Cholesterol

  • Blood pressure

  • Mood

  • Strength and endurance

  • Hydration levels

  • Sleep quality

  • Eating a wide variety of foods

Our bodies gives us signs about about its health and needs all the time - often we just need to learn how to reconnect with it and listen to its wisdom in order to guide our decision making. Of course, if weight gain or loss was relatively sudden or unexplainable, seeking medical guidance is recommended.

But if we were to notice that our body shape or size is changing, body fat is creeping up and we start to feel a bit uncomfortable, is it possible to get curious about what’s changed, proactively retune our focus on our self-care and respond with kindness - without the added pressure of attaching a number on the scales?

WHAT ABOUT HOW YOU LOOK?

As mentioned, aside from health, the other main reason people get attached to the number on the scales is they care about their appearance and associate that with body weight. Understandably many of us have some desire to look our ‘best’ as well as feel at our best. Me too, it is natural to want that for ourselves.

But, if we wrap some serious context around this, I believe that many people probably only care about their weight, shape or size to the extent they do, because we live in a society now that prizes thinness and actively entices us to lose weight to conform to certain beauty ideals. In today’s world, it can be very hard not to believe that we wouldn’t somehow be happier, more attractive, successful or confident in a slimmer body!

Of course, it’s not my role to decide whether people should be less attached to the aesthetics of their body shape or size. But, I will invite my clients to ask themselves how their attachment to their weight or body image works for them in their life. If a client’s self-worth is so wrapped up in the number on the scales that it is detracting from their experience of life (some examples are when how a person feels about their body dictates whether or not they will put on swimwear and go to a pool with their children, or whether or not they will go on an important date), then it may be time to explore their challenges with their body image.

FINDING YOUR NATURAL HEALTHY WEIGHT

I understand if the idea of letting go of the bathroom scales feels novel or scary. And even if it’s something you want to do, challenging ingrained beliefs about weight definitely doesn’t happen overnight.

But gently enquiring into the origins of our beliefs and starting to loosen any rigid attachment to body weight does NOT mean letting go of your health, wellbeing or a healthy interest in your appearance.

When my client reconnect with and builds trust in their own intuition around food, their body and their health, they allow their body to naturally find it’s own healthy, biologically appropriate size and shape (You can read more about set-point weight here).

If someone has been focusing on the pounds or kg on the scales, it can be easy to forget that the human body has it’s own innate natural weight management system drawing on powerful physiological mechanisms to help keep it balanced and healthy, it gives us cues all the time to help us support it in doing so.

There is considerable evidence that Intuitive Eating (the opposite of controlled/restricted eating/weight-loss dieting), which is an approach to helping you become the expert of your own body, is associated with improved nutrient intake, reduced eating disorder symptomatology - and not with weight gain. To the contrary, several studies have found intuitive eating to be associated with lower body mass. Intuitive eating has also been linked with improved cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and reduced markers of inflammation.

Follow your Gut not a diet

The Gut Reaction Method, which draws heavily on Intuitive Eating, teaches you how to:

  • Embrace a health not diets mentality where you broaden your definition of health beyond weight

  • Focus on health behaviours and steadily building satisfying and nourishing eating habits that work for YOU

  • Better listen to your body and respond to its needs

  • Eat intuitively and mindfully for nourishment and satisfaction

  • Tap in to the power of nutrition gently and strategically to directly support your own health and any health concerns you may have

  • Get in touch with your true values around health and appearance and develop healthy new perspectives around body image. Know there are plenty of ways to build body confidence

  • Be compassionate with yourself

It is through this approach, that I believe you too can help your body find its happy place, enhance your health and vitality, improve your emotional wellbeing and self-esteem AND live your life to your full, regardless of the number on the scales.

Next steps

Are you feeling out of control around food? Do you have challenges with your energy, food cravings, gut health or digestion? Are you looking for a fresh approach to nutrition that values your physical and emotional wellbeing?

My personalised support brings together Intuitive Eating and Nutritional Therapy, empowering you to overcome the barriers to living a healthier life in harmony with food and your body.

If you would you benefit from this type of support, then please check out my private programmes here, or contact me for an exploratory chat to find out more.

Research links and resources for this blog

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Can an App Transform your Health? Navigating the Pros and Cons of the ZOE Program
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