Time to Ditch the Scales and Lose the Weight Obsession

It is no big secret that I have a love hate relationship when it comes to food. More specifically I love it but it is apparent that it really doesn't like my body sometimes. I've struggled over the years to find the right balance between being healthy and turning obsessive, looking at the calories on a packet and deciding I couldn't possibly eat that. This comes down to what I think about my appearance and the numbers that look back at me when I'm standing on the weighing scales. 

There have been times when I have become close to being very ill when I chose to not eat, I lost a lot of weight and I had an obsession with seeing the numbers on the scale go down but we all know that's not a good thing to do and to be honest looking back I also know that it didn't make me look good at all. And if I'm honest since having my daughters I have struggled more because I know that I need to set the example, to show body confidence and to not pass my insecurities onto my children.

"Everybody has a part themselves that they don't like but I've stopped complaining about mine because I don't want to critique mother nature's handy work!"

As I've got older my mind set has changed and although I still worry about my body's appearance at times, the thoughts aren't as crippling as they used to be. I've mentioned a lot via my Instagram page that what I'm trying to achieve is getting stronger not skinnier and not just stronger in body but in my mind too. I'm focusing more on the positive and less on the negative and this means that I've also changed how I eat.

When I was younger I always took the stance that things like bread, potatoes etc were bad for you and that meant that fruit and vegetables were the foods that were going to help me in my quest to lose weight but that was me being naive. In recent months having taken more of an interest in a real balanced diet, I've come to learn (how did I not know?), that fruit and vegetables can actually contain the same amount of carbohydrates as those beige foods that I thought were so bad for me.

"I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her own skin."

This year I started using My Fitness Pal, not necessarily to count how many calories I was eating each day but to work out whether I was getting a good balance of fats, carbs and proteins, what many people know as macros. Turns out half the reason I wasn't feeling as healthy as I should despite eating what I thought was a balanced diet was because actually I was consuming far too many carbs and not a lot of anything else.

Using My Fitness Pal has me now eating by numbers. It's mad because it just goes to show our perception of things from the media makes us do things that aren't right for our bodies. I'd been eating the wrong things and my portion sizes were all wrong too, I'd been eating far too little to sustain the exercising I was doing so instead of strengthening myself I was probably doing the opposite and becoming weaker.

"Life is too short to spend another day at war with yourself!"

I've used a calculator online to tell me roughly how many grams of carbs, fats and proteins I should take in on a daily basis and I know some of you are thinking well that sounds like hard work, I can tell you that it really isn't. After a couple of weeks of trial and error I'm more aware of what I'm eating, the amount I'm eating has increased significantly, no more permanently feeling hungry and despite putting on weight I actually feel a lot better about myself right now.

YOUR BODY HEARS EVERYTHING YOUR MIND SAYS, STAY POSITIVE 🙌🏻 With a week of sunshine there’s been a lot of body image posts popping up on social media, the “I need to lose my winter weight”, how to get bikini ready, the list goes on. Now I’ve always been honest with how I feel about myself, I have never been overly confident about my body, it’s improving as the years go on but that said I’m still striving to be happy healthy for myself and for my girls. They say that age is just a number and the same could be said for those pesky digits you see on the weighing scales. My hubby recently put new batteries in ours and I dared to step on and they happened to let me know that I’d put on a significant amount of weight compared to this time last year 😱but do you know what after a little battle in my mind I decided that I don’t care because actually my clothes still fit and I know my lifestyle is a balanced one. How I look wont be defined by what those numbers tell me, it will be based around how I feel and right now I’m feeling pretty good 😊So ladies and gents don’t let other people make you feel anything that you don’t want. If you want to exercise great, if you want to eat cake go ahead (I know I still do), let this be the year that you do things for you not because the numbers on the scale or the size of your clothes tell you to!! 👍🏻 #summerready #positivebody #onesizedoesnotfitall #lifecloseup #littlestoriesofmine #myhappycapture #petitejoy #mamamummymum

A post shared by Chantelle Hazelden (@mamamummymum) on Apr 22, 2018 at 1:44am PDT

On a typical day I'm consuming between 1400 and 1600 calories and eating three meals and three snacks every day. And even better, I haven't got this dreaded feeling of guilt that I used to get when I ate something that wasn't considered "good for me". I have cake and chocolate every week, totally guilt free and that is a feeling that is more than liberating. I've lost the cycle of oh I've eaten too much so tomorrow I must not eat a lot at all.

"Another person's beauty is not the absence of your own."

My girls see how I'm eating and they are aware of maintaining a balanced diet, ie if they have sweets for one snack then they balance it out with fruit for the next. They know mummy has treat days where she's not following the numbers on a screen and they also know that exercising isn't a must do, that mummy does it because actually it makes her feel good and they enjoy joining in with me on occasion too.

I no longer step on weighing scales. I did once this year and it instantly had me spiralling back down to those bad thoughts because according to my dreaded enemy, I'd put on quite a lot of weight since the same time last year. I had to give myself a severe telling off, my clothes still fit and before stepping on them I was happy so why worry? Really we are our own worst enemies and if we don't let these things define us then we have the power to make ourselves feel great.

"You don't need to buy into any lifestyle besides your own and what best fits your body."

For me, eating by numbers isn't a way of losing weight, it's an opportunity to gain back control, to increase self awareness and give myself the knowledge to allow me to remain balanced, to be healthy and happy at the same time. This method isn't for everybody but this is my way of becoming body confident and stopping myself falling back into the trap of bad habits from the past. Now it is about feeling as good as I look because I do look good and we should all tell ourselves the same thing!