Читать книгу An Unfit Mother: How to get your Health, Shape and Sanity back after Childbirth - Kate Cook - Страница 34

Don’t always assume that the scales are a true measure of what is going on with the body. If exercise levels are adequate, you may be putting on muscle but losing actual fat, which is what we want, isn’t it? Muscle weighs three times more than fat, so concentrate on losing inches even if you are not losing the pounds. I recommend you measure your waist at its narrowest point and your hips at their widest point and do this if you absolutely have to just once a week.

There are lots of ways to determine what you should weigh, but remember that most of these scales are done for average people and can be misleading. For example, body mass index (a scale that looks at mass rather than weight on its own) doesn’t take into consideration if you have a lot of muscle. So, obviously don’t ignore the indicators of where you should be, but don’t feel that you have to live by them either.

Look at the tip on body image on page 188. Loving your body now is the only way you will accept yourself as you are—without all the chat and wishing you were a size 10—face facts, you aren’t. But if you just get on with great nutrition, great exercise and a great attitude, you will be fine. You might want to use the indicator of your clothes to judge whether you have got to your goals, rather than weight alone.

I completely agree with Lucy—give your scales to your worst enemy—they are a curse. Get weighed every so often when you go to the doctors or the gym, but don’t live by the scales or you make a pact with the devil!

If you get into the game of weighing yourself every day, then every day becomes a desperate competition with yourself. ‘OMYGOD! How could I have put on three pounds in a night?’ ‘Right,’ you declare, ‘I am going to take my earrings off, stand on one foot and see if that makes a difference. OK, if I go to the loo, that will knock off a few pounds.’ You beat yourself up for the BAD days and stuff your face, because—what does it matter? But when you have actually lost weight, well, you starve yourself all day because you are on the right track—mad logic.

Another game that goes on in your head is to get down to a target weight that, in effect, you have made up. When I played this game, for example, I had to be an ‘odd’ number on the scales, so I had to be 8 stone 7 and not 8 stone 8…

…and, of course, when you get to 8 stone 7, the game is to get to 8 stone 5…

…and then that is not really good enough because, in fact, the most ideal weight is 8 stone 3…

…Then all your friends start badgering you because you look too thin…arggh!

So the best thing is, don’t even get into those games in the first place. The nutrition programme in this book should liberate you from all that. Please let it. You can allow yourself to be liberated by:

* Blowing up your scales with dynamite—or, better still, giving them to a ‘friend’.

* Just cracking on with eating well, doing some exercise and trying to change your attitude.

* If you really can’t give up the scales, try putting them on different surfaces.

* Or slightly alter the scale dial to read just a bit lighter, because the scales can’t possibly be right. Can they?