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Have you ever wondered why you should ditch the scale and focus on other metrics of health instead?
Ditching the scale can:
- Improve self confidence
- Improve body image
- Improve your health
- Give you back time
Weighing regularly is a common behavior in diet culture that doesn’t give you much information at all about your overall well being.
This article will explore why weighing yourself is not only an inaccurate measurement of your overall health, but also can be addictive and unhealthy.
Why Can’t You Trust The Scale
Your body weight is determined by many factors. A scale can only measure your total body weight or mass.
The scale cannot measure:
- Your lean body mass percentage (includes muscle and skeletal tissue)
- Your physical activity level
- Fluid retention or fluid shifts
- Your metabolic rate
- Your health
All of these variables are much more likely to lead to positive health outcomes than meeting a BMI standard or a certain body weight.
In addition, your weight and your health is highly correlated with genetics. What this means is that there are certain parts of your body composition you have simply no control over.
5 Reasons Why You Should Ditch The Scale
You’ll get a better picture of your overall health
Weight cannot tell you anything about your health. If you want to get a more accurate picture of your health, you should measure these things instead:
- Your lab values
- How much water you drink a day
- Making sure you get a variety of fruits and vegetables daily
- Getting enough to eat each day
- If you are enjoying eating
- Getting in healthy movement
Weighing yourself can become obsessive
Weighing yourself is a form of body checking. When it comes to body checking, the more you body check, the more you will have an urgency to body check.
Weighing yourself can be obsessive because:
- You constantly have to check your weight to make sure you’re “okay”
- You feel like you are “good” when you weigh less and “bad” when you weigh more
- You change how you eat because of your body weight
- You compulsively exercise because of what you see on the scale
An obsession with weighing yourself can lead to body dysmorphia or eating disorders.
You Can’t Always Control Your Body Weight
There are many variables that contribute to your body weight that are completely out of control. Weighing regularly can cause you to hate your body or have an intense fear of weight gain.
Feeling guilty about a body weight you can’t change can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health aspects.
Some things you can’t control about your weight include:
- Food scarcity leading to metabolic changes that are out of your control
- Low birth weights leading to adiposity storage later in life
- Social contributors to health such as safe places to move your body
- Genetic contributors to body fat storage and lean body mass distribution
- Medical conditions influencing your body weight
- Weight loss rebound resulting from biological shifts from chronic dieting
You’re Body Image Will Improve
Weighing constantly can lead to poor body image. If you ditch the scale, you can focus on improving your body image.
Weighing constantly leads to poor body image because:
- You start to view yourself objectively (as an object) versus a person
- You will connect your worth to your weight
- You will start to compare your bodies to other bodies
- You will start to compare your bodies to a former body
5 Tips To Stop Weighing Obsessively
- Track healthy habits instead
- Track the number of days you don’t weigh yourself
- Commit to reducing the number of days you weigh weekly
- Put the Scale Away
- Smash the Scale (if you’re ready!)
How To Measure Success Without Weighing
The problem with weighing yourself is that you start to measure your body and your behaviors as either a success or failure.
However, bodies and lifestyle behaviors are not black and white. Your health should not be measured in numbers. Ditching the scale can lead to true body freedom.
Ditch the scale and measure your health by:
- Celebrating non scale victories of health
- Asking yourself positive body image questions daily
- Honoring your hunger and fullness cues
- Meal planning to save time and energy
- Choosing foods that improve your mood and energy levels
- Grocery shopping with care or growing your own food
- Respecting your body regardless of your body weight
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