Tag Archive for: body weight

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.

 

It’s Okay if You’re Not Ready to Give Up Dieting

Not everybody is ready to hear that “diets don’t work”. For years, you’ve been trying all the different diets that hit the market in hopes of losing weight and keeping it off. But each time, you gain back most, if not all, of the weight you lost, and you are back at square one.

The Dieter’s Dilemma

The Dieter’s Dilemma starts with the desire to be thin. This desire leads to the start of your diet. Eventually, you experience cravings for foods you’ve been restricting. This leads to having a “loss of control” and “overeating”, maybe even binge eating on these foods. You regain the weight you lost, with a side dish of guilt and shame.

But then, the desire to be thin becomes strong again, and you start your next diet.

The cycle continues, until you acknowledge that diets don’t work, and there must be a better way to exist. There is.

Reject the Diet Mentality

The first step to no longer dieting is to reject the diet mentality. That means learning to acknowledge when the Food Police is shouting food rules at you, as well as barbs, criticisms, and judgement about you “not following the rules”.

This step will take time. Think about it. You’ve been following diet food rules for years. You’ve been listening to others tell you when to eat, how much to eat and what to eat. These rules have created cognitive distortions and it takes practice to learn to reframe these thoughts into more rational thoughts.

Tip: Every time you hear a diet thought pop up, pause and call it out. Challenge that thought right then and there!! Within time, you will see that the Food Police is losing it’s hold over you.

Intuitive Eating

If you consider the words Intuitive Eating, you can come to understand that you have the natural inborn instinct to know when you are hungry and full, and what you truly want to eat in that moment. You are born with that instinct.

According to the creators of Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, Intuitive Eating is a “self-care eating framework, which integrates instinct, emotion, and rational thought.”

There are 10 principles of Intuitive Eating which work in 2 main ways:

  1. They help you cultivate attunement to the physical sensations in your body so you can meet both your biological and psychological needs. These are sensations that you have likely not been paying attention to in regard to eating, because you were focused on following rules external to your body.
  2. They help remove the obstacles that may be present that interfere with you cultivating this attunement. These obstacles generally come from your mind and the beliefs and thoughts you have around food, eating and your body.

I express to my clients that it’s very important to begin the process of giving up dieting by working on mindset first, rather than trying to attune to the inner signals. When you still have a diet mindset running in the back of your mind, then it’s much harder to learn to eat when hungry and stop when full because the rules are still running the show.

But What About Weight?

Great question!

I know that you are unhappy with your current body (weight). That’s why you’ve been on and off multiple diets over your lifetime. But if you continue to pursue intentional weight loss, then you are continuing to diet. It’s not possible to learn to reject the diet mentality while also trying to lose weight.

Will you lose weight? The honest answer is, I don’t know. Only your body knows what it will do when you stop restricting and allow your body to land where it is genetically pre-determined to land.

Are you able to put the desire to change your body on the side for a little while? To acknowledge that the desire for weight loss is there, but you won’t actively pursue it?

If you are able to do that, then you are ready for the Intuitive Eating journey. If you are not ready to put weight loss on the sideline, then you’re not ready to begin your Intuitive Eating journey.

And that is okay! It may take you some time to come around to it. And when you do, please know that I am here for you.

To get a taste of what it’s like to break free of diets, pop your name and email in the boxes below to a 3 day experience like no other!

 

 

Is Weight a Symbol of Something Deeper?

Isabel walked into my office having made the decision to make changes in her eating behaviors. She recently went to the doctor for her annual exam and her doctor put the scare of life into her. Her diabetes was “out of control”, her blood pressure was elevated, and she was just diagnosed with gastroparesis (delayed gastric emptying, a complication of uncontrolled diabetes). She was distraught but committed. The doctor sent Isabel on her way with a prescription to lose weight.

This isn’t unusual. Most doctors will prescribe weight loss to lower blood glucose, cholesterol levels and blood pressure. And while you may see a reduction in these values if you lose weight, the problem is that weight loss is not a behavior you can just tell someone to do. If you’ve been a dieter, you know what I mean.

Is Weight Loss Through Dieting Sustainable?

Anyone can lose weight when they “follow” a diet. But the question is – can you sustain that way of eating for a lifetime?

Research shows us the answer is NO. About 95-98% of people who lose weight on a diet regain that weight and up to two-thirds gain back even more.

You may be thinking “Bonnie, I know someone who lost weight and kept it off”. I bet you do. But the 3-5% that do keep it off most often do so with disordered eating behaviors such as tracking their foods, counting points, eliminating certain foods, not allowing themselves full pleasure in eating what they want and spending a LOT of time in the gym (to name a few). Most people really cannot live a “normal” life of “normal” eating and “normal exercising” if they are trying to maintain a weight loss achieved through dieting.

When I explained to Isabel that we will not be focusing on weight loss but instead, we will focus on habits and behaviors that will enable her body to better use the insulin she is producing and ultimately help her improve her health (which SHE really wanted to do), including learning how to minimize the symptoms of gastroparesis, she was relieved. And then, she started to cry!

Using Weight as a Cover Up

All is not always how it looks. Many times, when working with a client on improving their relationship with food, it becomes apparent that there’s a reason why they’ve struggled so long. With the realization that the odds are low that they can lose weight and keep it off, they self-sabotage their own efforts in order to keep the weight on.

Why you might ask?

Having “failed” so many times, they are embarrassed to continue to yo-yo diet. So, they cover up the shame and embarrassment by making jokes about themselves and allow others to joke about them too.

This is what happened to Isabel. She was known in her group of friends as the “fat funny one” and she took on this persona, making jokes at her own expense, when deep down she was hurting terribly.

Isabel never told anyone this, until she broke down and cried in the safe space of my office.

Weight-Neutral Nutrition Therapy: A Focus on Behaviors, Not Weight

A weight-neutral approach to nutrition therapy, including diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol management focuses on the habits and behaviors you can change which ultimately lead to improved health, regardless of body weight. These behaviors include balanced eating, joyful movement, stress management, improving sleep, taking medications as prescribed and engaging in mindful eating behaviors.

This approach takes the emphasis off weight and brings a sense of relief to those who’ve tried to diet to lose weight as the treatment prescribed for health. It promotes positive behavioral change without the shame and guilt often felt and it empowers them to continue along the path of healthy living.

Is Losing Weight “Bad”?

Let me assure you that I am not against weight loss. I want to make this perfectly clear. What I am against is intentionally pursuing weight loss in an effort to shrink your body to meet the warped societal standards of the “thin ideal”, and as the treatment of medical conditions.

If in the process of learning about your disease state and making sustainable habit and behavior changes (including managing your stress better and having better sleep), you lose weight, then that means it’s what your body needed to do to return to it’s natural healthy weight. And in this case, I DO believe that this will be sustainable.

Remember, weight loss is not a behavior. It is an outcome of habit and behavior change.

Take Action

If you are ready to improve your health without a focus on weight loss, reach out to me here!

 

 

 

 

Your Body is Not a Calculator

How many servings of grains should I eat each day? How about protein, fruit, veggies, and fat? These are questions I used to get all the time when I created meal plans for clients.

 

That was back in the day when I was doing weight loss counseling (cringe!). The meal plans I created always “worked” for clients if they “followed” them to a T. But the problem was, they were not able to follow them exactly because they had a life to live. They had birthday parties to go to, vacations to go on, business dinners to attend. And once they felt like they couldn’t “stick” to the plan, they started making choices that didn’t honor their health.

 

Of course, we know what followed. Guilt, shame, feelings of disappointment and frustration. Then back on the meal plan, only for history to repeat itself.

 

Energy In = Energy Out

 

When I was in school, I learned about energy in = energy out. And in order to lose weight, you had to take in 500 less calories per day, or expend 500 extra calories per day, to lose 1 pound per week. Nutrition science has come a long way since I was in school.

 

In those early days of counseling, this is how I calculated weight loss meal plans for clients. I first calculated how much energy (aka calories) one needed to take in to maintain current weight. I then subtracted 500 calories and created a meal plan. I encouraged exercise to expend even more energy, this way my client would lose even more weight.

 

The problem with this is that THE BODY IS NOT A CALCULATOR.

 

This formula doesn’t work like this in real life. There are many factors that affect how you absorb the calories that you eat such as medications you might be on, medical conditions/diseases that you might have, your genetic makeup and the bacteria in your intestines to name a few.

 

You cannot manipulate this energy equation by eating less or exercising more to promote weight loss.

 

Once I realized this, I stopped calculating precise meal plans for clients.

 

2 Variables that Affect Your Body Weight

 

Manipulating your energy input and output isn’t going to help you achieve the body you want. But there are certain variables that will affect your body weight that are often NOT addressed. These are:

 

  1. Stress: Do you live in a chronically stressed state? If yes, then your stress hormones (specifically cortisol) are streaming through your body wreaking havoc on your physical, behavioral and emotional health. Perhaps it’s time to figure out what is stressing you out and work on de-stressing with some tried and true stress management techniques such as meditation, yoga, deep breathing, etc. Learn more here!

 

  1. Sleep: Do you get enough sleep each night? There is no magic number but there are enough studies that show that most people need between 7-8 hours of solid sleep. Here’s a hint: If you wake up the next morning yawning, you are not getting restorative sleep. Perhaps it’s time to put a sleep program into place.

 

What About Food/Nutrition and Exercise?

 

You might think because I teach intuitive eating, that I don’t regard nutrition and exercise. This is NOT TRUE! What you put into your body and the movement you do (or don’t do) each day has an important impact on how you feel.

 

The way that I encourage my clients to address food/nutrition and exercise is through a gentle lens. Only when they have rid themselves of the diet mentality can they move into this final step of their intuitive eating journey. And that goes for you too.

 

If you are still counting calories and watching the calorie counter on the treadmill in the gym, then you are not yet ready for gentle nutrition and movement. But if you have given up the calorie counting and watching and have regained the trust in your body to guide your eating, then by all means it’s time to start taking a closer look at the foods you are choosing and the movement you are doing (more on this in a future post!)

 

Final Thoughts

If you are still convinced that watching every calorie you eat is going to make a difference in your body weight, then please show some compassion for yourself. It’s okay, you are surrounded by a culture that has us believing this and I truly know that it’s hard to move away from it (take it from someone who used to calorie count…me!).

 

With time, you will learn to make smart eating choices from a place of self-care. In the meantime, if you need support, you can always reach out to me here!

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!

 

 

 

Can Intuitive Eating Lead to Your Natural Healthy Weight?

This week’s Intuitive Eating Wednesday Question comes from a new member in my online community:

 

“Can intuitive eating lead to a natural weight?”

 

This is a great question. The short answer is yes, I believe that it could. But the longer answer requires us to have a bit of a conversation.

 

What does ‘natural weight’ mean to you?

 

Do you mean that if you “do” intuitive eating, will you lose weight? The truth is, some people lose weight, some gain weight initially, and some people’s weight remains stable. Keep in mind that the process of becoming an intuitive eater is NOT a weight loss program.

 

I’m going to repeat that. Intuitive eating is not a weight loss program. And if anyone tells you that it is and promises you weight loss, then run the other way.

 

Intuitive eating helps you change your relationship with food and your body, it helps you regain the trust in your inner body wisdom to guide your eating. You have this ability deep within you, it’s just buried under years of dieting and trying to interfere with what your natural weight is.

 

Back to the question…what is a natural weight?

 

A natural weight is the weight your body will maintain with ‘normal’ eating and ‘normal’ movement. This means no food restriction and no boot camp exercise regimes pushing yourself beyond your limits.

 

The problem is that your natural weight may not match the weight you have in your mind that you desire, which is likely influenced by the surrounding diet culture, current fashion, celebrities and even recommendations of your doctor to lose weight to an unrealistic number based on outdated height and weight charts and calculations.

 

So take a moment and ask yourself if you are chasing an unrealistic weight or body size. A lot of clients that I start working with are. They have a number or vision in mind of what they want to look like, but that is not realistic for them. And, let’s add to this equation your genetics. Genetics also plays a role in determining body size, and this may not match up to the weight or size you have in mind.

 

I do believe that your body will balance out at your natural healthy weight by practicing intuitive eating consistently, respecting and caring for your current body, and practicing self-care.

 

How long will this take? No one knows. Just enjoy the process as it’s happening.

 

 

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.