No 1 Reason People Quit Their Diet:The Scales – Making Life Safer
The weighing scales is such a negative instrument and in my experience it is the number one contributing factor that causes people to quit their weight loss programme.
Also, the scales are wrong every 2 out of 3 times you weigh yourself.
You can retain as much as five pounds or 2.2 kg in water in any given week.
Think about how often it has happened to you, that a week of perfect dieting and exercise has led to a weight gain on the scales?
Your immediate reaction: anger, frustration, despair and thoughts of quitting.
On the other hand, I’m sure there were plenty of times where you deviated from your diet a few times and the scales went down.
The drop in weight would reinforce your negative behaviour. Therefore, your behaviour in either case is reinforced by an insensitive machine that didn’t ask, whether you were wearing different clothes, when your last bowel movement was, how much sleep you had, whether you drank more or less water ,whether you performed exercise or where you were in your menstrual cycle.
Another area where the scales affect most people is when they know that they have gained weight for example after a holiday or most recently as experienced by many, a lockdown. They sometimes fear coming into the clinic because of what the scales will say. They feel guilty and worry what we might think about their weight gain. We always say at Motivation we don’t do guilt, you are completely accepted the way you are.
Again, over the years we have told numerous clients that they do not have to worry about getting weighed and just come back to the clinic for a friendly encouraging visit and some positive reassurance. They can get on the scales whenever they are ready.
We always say the focus is not on the scales it’s on you.
I want to leave you with this thought.
Making Life Safer is intended to provide whatever help we can to enable you to find a path to a lighter and healthier you.
Ditching the weighing scales should be one of your main considerations on this path.
