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5 reasons to ditch your scale
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Weight is a loaded topic. It can bring up lots of emotions, frustrations and confusion. Ditching your scale might be the best thing you can do for yourself. - photo by Rebecca Clyde
Weight is such a loaded topic. It can bring up lots of emotions, lots of frustration and lots of confusion.

Contrary to what weve been taught by society and in the health field, sometimes weight isnt really the issue. Weight may easily follow our healthy habits, but it also may not.

Here are five reasons why ditching your scale just might be the best thing you can do for yourself.

1. Weight isnt a good measure of health.

Think about the concept of hydration. When weighing yourself daily or consistently, we focus on every single digit. Losing one pound is exciting and you think youre doing great but on the other hand, if you gain a pound, you feel like a failure.

Think about it if you drink 16 ounces of water, youre going to weigh one pound more. Is drinking that water unhealthy? Probably not, especially in the heat. This is one small example of why focusing on weight may not be so productive. So does that weight gain reflect failure or unhealthiness? No, it doesnt. A review of controlled weight loss trials shows why.

2. Focusing on weight can lead to unhealthy habits.

If weight loss is your main or only measure of success, you can totally miss the mark. In a previous health-related job Ive had, I had to weigh hundreds of employees every few weeks. Through that experience, I noticed a few trends: Many people I weighed expressed frustration that they were doing "all the right things" and lost a small amount of weight or none at all.

On the other hand, I saw a few people who were losing weight rapidly. I asked them what they were doing, and a few reported that they were eating almost nothing. Now, these anecdotal reports aren't scientifically sound, but they are reality for some. If youre pursuing weight loss at any cost, you may be risking your health or your well-being to reach a certain number on the scale.

3. A 'healthy weight' is kind of arbitrary.

A healthy or ideal weight as promoted in the media is not that. One study looked at the BMIs of contestants of Miss America pageants since the 1920s. Im no fan of the BMI scale, but with the increased health risks of a low body weight/BMI and possibility of eating disorders that may lead to that weight, this is appropriate. The average BMI of contestants in 2010s was 17.5.

It's important to note that weight/height ratio is only naturally found in about 5 percent of women. Secondly, that tells the rest of the women that an ideal body is one similar to that. It may be impossible for most women to achieve this weight in a way that promotes health and well-being.

Multiple studies also point to the fact that people with BMIs considered overweight tend to be healthier and live longer.

4. Weight bias makes things really hard.

Weve either experienced it or seen it, or even done it. Our society praises weight loss at face value, and there's a stigma associated with living in a larger body.

Anyone who makes lifestyle changes, either positive or negative ones, and is congratulated for those changes knows what its like. All of a sudden, your value and you are being tied into your weight. Youre being noticed, you may be asked what you did to achieve it. Youre getting positive reinforcement.

But the truth is that your value has nothing to do with what your body looks like, your ability to accomplish difficult things has nothing to do with your ability to restrict and lose weight. Our society focuses on so much on weight, and we can easily miss out on nourishing our bodies.

5. Dieting for weight loss often results in failure.

For so many people, dieting is a vicious cycle that doesnt really ever end. Experiences from past participants of The Biggest Loser tell us a lot about the perils of dieting. Their diets wrecked their metabolisms and lead to weight gain in the long run. In addition to wrecking peoples metabolisms, dieting causes us to feel a sense of powerlessness. Diets, for example, dont work for most people, and when those diets dont work we, as the dieters, feel like failures and dont attribute our inability to follow a restrictive often miserable diet to the actual diet. Also, diet rules often trigger an inner rebellion because they infringe on your own ability to choose for yourself.

Clearly, this is a complex issue and many of the complexities arent brought up in this short article. Essentially, people can be healthy at any size, if we focus on enjoyable ways to move more, eat a wide variety of foods, practice gentle nutrition, reduce stress, and be kind to ourselves we can drastically improve our mental and physical health. Here are additional resources to learn more about really improving your health and well-being.

So, with all that said, instead of focusing on weight loss, focus on separating your value from your weight, focus on nourishing your mind and body with positive self-talk and health habits that make your body feel better and yourself empowered.
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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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