Tag Archive for: scale

How to Say NO to Being Weighed at the Doctor’s Office

Body shaming comes in many different forms—some are more obvious than others. Here are a few examples:

 

  • A person commenting “you’re fat” on your Instagram, Facebook or other social media platform.
  • Receiving comments, remarks, or concerns from worrisome friends about your weight, body size and eating habits who just want to “help you out”.
  • Your doctor who makes comments about your weight because it’s “going to impact your health one day” if you don’t “take care of it”—even though you just came in for a sinus infection.

Now-a-days, body shaming in the healthcare space is all too common and can impact a person’s mental and physical health.

 

Impact on your mental health: You leave the doctor’s office feeling ashamed, disrespected, unheard, and stigmatized because of your weight.

Impact on your physical health: You are less likely to return to the doctor because of the shame and stigmatism you feel from the the doctor and nurse. And the less doctor’s visits you have, the poorer your health outcomes.

 

It’s Here to Stay

 

Although weight stigma and weight bias are not going away any time soon, did you know there is something you can do about it?

 

You can decline being weighed at the doctor’s office!

 

Being weighed at the doctor’s office is (typically) not a necessity, especially if you are going in for something very unrelated to your weight.

 

So yes! If being weighed at the doctor’s office makes you feel uncomfortable or triggers unwanted emotions, you can decline being weighed!

 

But—how do you handle it? Here are a few strategies to help you out:

 

1: Show assertiveness

 

Remember: you have the autonomy to direct your healthcare, you owe no one an explanation for what you choose to do with your body.

Although healthcare professionals may appear to be “authoritative figures”, they are people too and should respect and understand your wishes.

The doctor is there to service you, you are allowed to direct what kind of services you wish for them to provide you. And if being weighed is not a service you wish to have done, then you can say no!

Try saying something like this:

 

“I’m really not comfortable with being weighed today. I would like to just skip this part of the appointment. Thank you!”

 

2: Offer to have your “blind weight” taken.

 

There are times when the doctor may wish to know your weight in order to make proper treatment decisions (like prescribing a certain dosage of medication).

During times like this, having your weight taken may actually be medically necessary and unavoidable in order to continue with care.

Try saying something like this:

 

“If my weight is medically necessary, I’d prefer to not see the number on the scale and request the number not be communicated to me in any way. Thank you!”

 

3: Shift the conversation.

 

For those living in a larger body, you may find that many doctor’s make the whole conversation and focus of the appointment about your weight (even when it’s not necessary).

Try de-centralizing weight from the conversations you have with your doctor and other medical staff.  Shift the conversation to overall health rather than weight.

 

Try saying something like this:

 

“I do not want to be weighed. I do not use my weight as a way to understand my health and wish to have the appointment focus on my health, independent from my weight.”

 

“I have found that focusing on my weight too much is actually hurtful to my health and I no longer wish to be weighted”

 

“Getting on the scale and having my weight read to me is very triggering for me. I am working on repairing my relationship with food and my body. Please honor that.”

 

 

It can seem nerve wracking at first to tell the nurse or doctor that you refuse to be weighed. And they may resist at first. But always remember that YOU ARE IN CHARGE!

 

Need support? Come on over to my free private Facebook group and be in community with other women who are healing from dieting.

 

How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctor’s Office

My client walked into my office. We’ll call him Bob. I had not seen Bob for 2 weeks because I was on vacation. Bob has recently decided to quit dieting. Yes, after 50+ years of trying every diet known to man AND undergoing bariatric surgery (of which he gained back most of the weight he lost) he decided he needed to finally address the true underlying reasons why he was overeating.

 

Emotions.

 

Namely sadness and loneliness with a dose of frustration thrown in there.

 

But Bob knew that no matter how much his doctor told him he had to lose weight because he has diabetes and other chronic conditions, the diets just did not work. He was able to follow the diet for a short time and then an emotion would hit, and he would numb out with food. The diet was over.

 

Is this a familiar story to you?

 

On this night when I saw Bob in my office he had only been working with me on intuitive eating for about 2 months. But he was doing a great job at rejecting the diet mentality. So I was surprised that this night when he walked in, I can tell by the way he was speaking that he was slipping back into diet mentality.

 

I asked him what was going on. He shared with me that he was having terrible back pain and all the doctors he’d been to over the last 2 weeks while I was on vacation told him to lose weight to heal the back pain. He was seriously considering starting a diet, although I pointed out to him that he was already restricting (a.k.a dieting) which I could tell based on what he was sharing with me.

 

He looked me straight in the eye and he said “you’re right. I didn’t realize my actions were actually dieting”. Yet, he was still so shook up by the doctors prescribing weight loss to him AGAIN, that he was desperate.

 

Bob is a physical therapist and I asked him how he would treat one of his patients who complained of back pain. He laid out a physical therapy protocol. I then asked him “Bob, wouldn’t this protocol be appropriate for you?” And he said yes.

 

And then he realized what’s really going on!

 

He was embarrassed by his doctors, ashamed that he had gained weight again, that he was forced to get on the scale and that his doctor’s only treatment prescription was weight loss when there were a slew of other treatment options they could have suggested.

 

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon.

 

One of the biggest fears I hear from clients about going to a doctor’s appointment is hearing the words:

 

“Get on the scale”!

 

And then the chills, the heart racing, the stomach sinking…and the words that follow:

 

“Lose weight and your blood pressure and blood sugar will come down”.

 

Well, dear doctor, you’ve said this a thousand times before and where has it gotten your patient?

 

I’ll tell you! A lifetime pass on the diet roller coaster ride.

 

What to Tell Your Doctor

  1. It’s time to take a stand. To let your doctor know that you will not be fat shamed.
  2. That you will no longer take “lose weight” as a solution to your current health issue.
  3. That you will not let your health evaluation be determined by a number on the scale.
  4. That you want to know what treatment options he gives his patients who are in smaller bodies – that’s the treatment options you want to discuss.

 

Listen, I realize it’s not always easy to advocate for yourself. I get that. But you know by now that weight loss and dieting is not the answer you are looking for.

 

I want to help you get off this vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting so you can learn to focus on habits and behaviors, not weight loss.

 

Please join me for a free webinar:

 

“THE 5 STEPS TO BREAK FREE OF DIETING”

So You Can Make Peace with Food, Enjoy Guilt-Free Eating and Get The Body You Love

 

======> Reserve your virtual seat here

 

You will discover…

  • The 3 essential ingredients you need to never diet again.
  • Why diet and food restriction are not the answer to long lasting weight loss.
  • The #1 reason why changing what you eat is keeping you spinning your wheels.
  • My 5 step system to finally achieve the body you love (that you can start using right away).

 

You will walk away from this training with the knowledge you need to get started so you never have to be afraid of the doctor’s scale again!

 

Click here to register now!

 

Bob called me the next day. He called to thank me for caring about his health and wellbeing. And for guiding him on how to advocate for himself at the doctor’s office. He reported to me that his back pain was hardly noticeable that morning. That’s the power of CARING SUPPORT!

 

Hope to see you on the Webinar. Join us here!

 

Say NO the Next Time Your Doctor Prescribes Weight Loss

It’s sad for me to write this but many doctors deepen the diet mentality of those struggling with their body and their relationship with food. I don’t think they do this to purposely harm, as they have taken an oath to “do no harm”. They just don’t know better.

 

But it’s time to wake them up!

 

Theresa is a chronic dieter, she has been on every diet imaginable to lose weight and mold her body into what society deems acceptable for her. She did lose weight on most of those diets, heck she’s a great rule follower, always was as a kid. But her weight loss was very short-lived. She always gained that weight back plus more.

 

I know you can relate.

 

But this time is different. She has PCOS and insulin resistance and her doctor is telling her to lose weight. He referred her to a nutritionist who will help manage her insulin by putting her on a special diet!

 

Theresa’s inner alarm went off! NO!

 

You see, Theresa has been working on changing her relationship with food through learning intuitive eating. And while she is still at the beginning of her journey, she is totally convinced that diets don’t work. Moreover, it’s the diet and diet mentality that have caused her to enter what was the never-ending restrict-binge cycle. So, the fact that her doctor recommended yet another diet for her really pissed her off.

 

“Doesn’t he realize that his “prescription” of weight loss has not and will never be the answer to managing my PCOS and insulin resistance”, she asked me?

 

Well one would think, but I guess not (sigh!)

 

I encouraged Theresa to go back to her doctor and ask him what treatment he would prescribe for a woman in a smaller body that has PCOS. That’s the treatment she wants.

 

When you go for your annual physical, the nurse tells you to “get on the scale”. You have every right to decline. Do not feel pressured to be weighed, even if the nurse says “I won’t tell you”. Nope! As one of my clients recently told her doctor: “I don’t want my health evaluated based in part by the number on a scale.” Bravo!

 

Betty went to her doctor for her annual checkup. All was well, her labs and blood pressure all great!

 

Doctor said “You should lose a few pounds”.

Betty: “why”?

Doctor: “You gained a few pounds this year”.

Betty: ” Well, last year I was restricting and had an eating disorder”.

Doctor: “Oh”.

End of visit.

 

Stand up for yourself when you go to the doctor. If you have health issues, insist he/she address them from a weight-neutral perspective.

 

What has been your experience with weight discussions at your doctor? Please share below!

 

 

 

Trash the Scale

This week’s Intuitive Eating Wednesday Question comes from Kay, a woman who has been working on overcoming emotional eating. I received an email from her that said the following:

 

“Sometimes eating healthy is easy. But sometimes eating healthy and losing weight feels like a struggle. I had to stop weighing myself recently. The scale was showing that I am going up and down around a pound per day.  I was getting worried, and it seemed like all of a sudden, I was struggling more (emotionally.)

 

This early morning, I went out to the backyard to water my lawn on my watering day, and my pajama bottoms almost fell off me. I wanted to go back inside and weigh. But if I did, and the scale didn’t show less, I knew that I would be upset.  How can I give up worries about how much I weigh?

 

This is such a great question and I know it’s something you are thinking as well. As a chronic dieter, you’ve used the scale to measure your success. Each day you’d get on the scale to see how you did the day before and to determine your plan of action for the day ahead. And, if we are being real, you probably go on the scale more than one time per day.

 

Let’s look at a few scenarios.

 

Scenario #1: You get on the scale in the morning and the number is a “good” number. Your mood for the day is happy.

 

Scenario #2: You get on the scale in the morning and the number is a “bad” number. Your mood for the day is depressed, even angry.

 

Both scenarios can trigger overeating, whether it be celebration eating (“I lost weight, I can have a treat”) or consolation eating (“I was so good and didn’t lose any weight. Why bother trying”.)

 

Other self-talk around the result of your morning weigh-in might sound like:

“I ate horribly yesterday, and I still lost weight. Thank goodness, I don’t have to starve today”.

“I only lost ¼ pound, it wasn’t worth it”.

 

This self-talk is the talk of a dieter. Without a doubt, weighing yourself keeps you in diet mentality. It fuels the body worry>food worry vicious cycle of emotional eating and dieting. If you truly want to be break free of this cycle, you must start with throwing away the scale.

 

Do you let the scale dictate your mood? Are you ready to throw it away?

 

Watch this video (click image) as I discuss this topic further and comment below with your commitment to stop weighing yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are You Married to the Scale?

Scale-married-divorcedLife as a chronic dieter is plagued with ups and downs, weight loss and weight gain. You want to find that one diet that works better than the rest, which will finally give you what you want, a new body. Well, a diet is not going to get you there. As you may realize by now you usually gain the weight back and then some, leaving you feeling sad, depressed and like a failure.

 

When you start a diet, do you set a goal as to how many pounds you want to lose? And, each week, or if we are really being honest here, each day you jump on the scale to see how much weight you lost. What happens when the number isn’t exactly what you had hoped for? It probably affects your mood and sets the tone for the rest of the day.

 

Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you let yourself be defined by a number? Are you married to the scale??

 

I encourage my clients who are on the journey to becoming an intuitive eater to put the weight loss and numbers game on the back burner for a while. Let’s not focus on the numbers. I recognize this is a very difficult thing to do since for all your years of dieting and being on formal weight loss diets where you would go to weekly meetings, you would also have weekly weigh-ins. I understand that up until now, the scale has been the only way you have measured your success.

 

Well that hasn’t worked, has it?

 

So, let’s try something different. Focus on being mindful in your eating, listening to your internal signals of hunger and satiety and make the best food choices for yourself that you can make. You will see that in time, weight loss will happen, without you even realizing it. The pants will become baggy, the skirt will be falling off, and the shirt will be swimming on you.  Visualize this happening as part of the natural process of trusting your inner instincts and wisdom.

 

It’s time to divorce the scale!

 

Okay, I realize that this sounds nice and all but is likely difficult for you to do. You need assistance. You need support. You need encouragement. And, I am here for you if you want me to be.

 

If you are seriously interested in learning how to lose the excess weight you are carrying around without focusing on the scale, just click here and request a FREE session with me. We will get on the phone and see the best way to move you forward.

 

Your turn to take action: It’s time to move beyond the dreaded scale. Get the support you need by clicking here.