Weight Management

This used to be my little ritual before getting weighed at a well known slimming club each week:

• Eat very lightly, until hallucinations of Kate Moss proportions were swimming in front of my eyes.

• Limit my drinks, so my tongue resembled the bottom of a budgie’s cage.

• Go for a wee when I got there – obviously, I would lose 1lb alone this way! The queue for the toilet was always longer than the weigh-in queue.

• Remove ALL extra clothing – it may be minus 2 outside, but I’m fine in my singlet and cotton skirt.

• Take off shoes.... oooh, sooooo heavy.

• Extricate any jewellery, and I’m not talking MR T mammoth sized chains here.

• Step very gently onto the scales, thudding down on them ensures a greater weight

• Tentatively balance on one leg, thus ensuring all your weight is not on the scales (I’m not quite sure where else it was meant to be.)

... get off and groan that I’d only lost 1/2 lb!

Seem mad? Trust me, I was not alone!

Now that weighing scale mentality still seems to have stuck with me. Even though I have given up slimming clubs for ever, the weighing scales still attract a little ritual. I weigh myself in the morning, after my shower, with no clothes on, before I have had my breakfast and a drink. If I don’t like the number I see. I wait a minute, move the scales to a different part of the floor and try again! Why?! Does a pound in either direction REALLY matter? Am I going to get stopped by a passerby in the street who says, ‘ummmh, you look a pound heavier than yesterday you fat bloater.’

So my quest is to find out what it would be like to give up weighing myself (I’m having palpitations as I write this!). The scales just produce mad thinking and behaviour. How often have you jumped on the scales in the morning, been disappointed with the reading, and then been in a foul mood for the rest of the day?

I have instructed my partner to hide the scales (thank you Chris for this great suggestion) so I will not be tempted to just hop on. The challenge is to go cold turkey for a month. But more importantly it is to tune into my body – how energised I feel, how happy I am with my shape and how I look. It is to look to my internal guide of contentment, rather than relying on an inaccurate metal box to feed me a number when I step onto it. I am more than just a number!

I will keep you updated on my progress