Motivating Mum Julie Durbhakula has lost over an amazing 14kgs and shares her story on daily weighing with Lose Baby Weight.
You can see Julie’s progress here.
Hi, I am Julie, one of the Motivating Mums for November and for my mid-month blog post I would like to talk about ‘Daily Weighing’ and the dangers that can be associated with becoming obsessed with that number on the scales.
I’ll admit that I too was once a daily weigh-in girl, I’d jump on those scales without a doubt every morning to track my ‘progress’ and depending on what number showed up reflected my mood and my self image for the rest of that day, it was becoming a vicious cycle, if the number crept up from the day before, even as little as 100g I’d feel disheartened and look at myself in the mirror and was convinced I could see that ‘gain’ in my body and I convinced myself that my clothes felt tighter and I was doing all this hard work for no reason – all I wanted to see was those numbers going down and on the days they did I was elated and my mood picked up.
I was one of those lucky women who found losing weight relatively easy while breastfeeding but the flip side to that is that it has been a bit more of a struggle since my daughter weaned and since she has weaned my weight loss not only stalled but I seen a few kg’s creep back on and this became the catalyst of my downward spiral into becoming obsessed with the scales and that number it showed, so much so I completely forgot about checking my measurements and all I worried about was how many kg’s I weighed.
Six months ago, I came to the realisation that my weighing obsession was leading into dangerous territory and I needed to stop, so I did. I banned myself from the scales for 1 month, I took my measurements on the first day of my ban, with the plan to re-check these after the month. Surprisingly my measurements had reduced slightly from before I had weaned my daughter despite the couple of kg’s gain but I had been so worried about those scales that I hadn’t noticed. The month that followed I just focussed on eating healthy and being active and I began to enjoy everything again and not being so focussed on ‘weight’. At the end of my self-imposed scale ban month, I jumped on to find the loss very minimal but alas my measurements had reduced again! This was the proof I needed that those scales cannot always be trusted.
I see a lot of posts in The Healthy Mummy and Lose Baby Weight facebook group from other Mums about weighing in daily and becoming disheartened at slight gains, so I decided to conduct a little experiment over the past week to show how much weight can fluctuate over a 24-48 hour period.
As Monday (3/11) was the first day of the November Challenge I weighed in for the month that day and my weight was 64.0kg. I decided to track my weight at several times over the course of the day/night and these were the results:
Thursday 6/11 at 11.00pm – 65.3kg
Friday 7/11 at 6.00am – 64.4kg
Friday 7/11 at 8.00am – 64.6kg
Friday 7/11 at 4.00pm – 65.2kg
Friday 7/11 at 9.30pm – 64.7kg
Saturday 8/11 at 7.00am – 63.6kg
As you can see, I had gone up and down all over the place depending on the time of day I weighed myself. For the record I weighed in this morning (Monday 10/11 – 1 week after initial Challenge weigh-in) and I was down 1kg exactly bringing my weight to 63.0kg
So I’m here to tell you ladies, don’t become scales obsessed, The Healthy Mummy and Lose Baby Weight plans are all about changing your lifestyle and beginning your journey to a happier and healthier you. I know how disheartening that number not moving or increasing can be but rest-assured that if you are eating the healthy, nutritious food found in the 28 Day Diet and Exercise Plan or the November Challenge and you are getting out there and being active then you’re heading in the right direction even if the scales aren’t moving.
Julie Durbhakula
Need to stock up on Healthy Mummy Smoothies? Then see our shop here
And join our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenges here