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Jessie takes a leap of faith
Research from the University of Colorado and Brown University shows that one of the unifying characteristics of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off is that they weigh themselves regularly.While regularly weighing yourself provides a quantifiable indicator of your success, it's important that you don't do it too often. In my experience, once or twice a month is optimal.
If you weigh yourself more often than that, you may be inadvertently blocking your efforts to connect with your body and lose weight. Jessie's story is a good case in point.
Jessie - a vibrant, energetic woman - read The Don't Go Hungry Diet and came to my book launch in March 2007. Having known Jessie for a few years, I knew that she was a great advocate of my scientifically backed weight loss principles. However, I never fully realized the impact they have had on Jessie's life until July this year, when she attended one of my workshops.
As the workshop commenced and participants and I started to become better acquainted with each other, Jessie beamed from ear to ear and announced that she had something to show everyone.
She dug into her bag, and I was intrigued to see what might possibly emerge.
Finally, Jessie resurfaced with a thick, heavy, navy blue, A4-sized diary.
'At home, I have other diaries like this one', she explained. Jessie opened the front cover of her diary revealing a two-page overview of 2007. As with all her previous diaries, each day of the year was represented on the opening page spread by a little rectangle, and in each little rectangle was a neatly written entry.
'This is me before Dr Amanda's book launch' explained Jessie as she proceeded to read out some of her daily entries.
'Eight stone five pounds, eight stone five pounds, eight stone four pounds, eight stone three, eight stone four, eight stone four, eight stone five, eight stone five...'
Since she was seventeen years old, Jessie had weighed herself almost every single day. At fifty-two years of age, she has quite a few weigh-ins under her belt! Daily weighing was part of Jessie's strategy for keeping her weight under control and continually pushing it down towards her ideal of just under eight stone (50 kilos). Invariably however, Jessie's weight hovered around 53 kilos or above, and once she even went as high as 64.4 kilos.
'And this is me after Dr Amanda's book launch' announced Jessie jubilantly, pointing to March in her 2-page overview of 2007.
Whereas up until late March Jessie's yearly overview was crammed with daily weigh-in results, a few days after my book launch a giant chasm appeared on the page and the remainder of the page was blank.
Jessie had taken a giant leap of faith and had decided to weigh herself just once a month.
In the past, various health care professionals had suggested she stop weighing herself every day, but she did not trust them enough to put it into practice. However, in reading my book and hearing me talk, something clicked and Jessie decided to give it a go.
'When I finally weighed myself again after one month of putting into practice the things I learned from Amanda, I was three pounds lighter!'
After so many years of daily weighing, Jessie was astonished with the effects of letting go and allowing her body to control her weight for her. What's more, Jessie has continued to weigh herself just once a month, and her weight hovers reliably around 50 kilos.
While this 2 kilo difference on Jessie's small frame feels wonderful, the effects on her mental well-being are more far-reaching. After years of rigid mental control over her weight, she's no longer afraid of gaining weight. Jessie explained in an E-mail:
The other major benefit of letting go of this one behavior is that it has allowed me to get on with living - a phrase that you have said again and again - because I'm no longer preoccupied and taking up valuable brain space with thinking about food and eating namely:
I can't eat this or that because...; I want to weigh less in the morning so I'll eat less tonight; what will my husband say if I don't eat; I don't want to go out because I may overeat or eat something I prefer not to; I have to be strong and rigid about what goes into my mouth...
These are just an example of the myriad of thoughts that used to run through my brain which are now over!!!'
See what can happen when you let go of weighing every day and instead connect with your body?
What our readers say...
"Dear Amanda, I have never been overweight, but I have always had 2-5 kilos that I want to lose to fit nicely into my jeans etc. and not have a roll of fat around my stomach. I started reading your book in January 09 after the "Xmas feast panic" as I was starting to become 5-7 kilos over my goal weight instead of 2-5 kilos over (I would like to be 60k). By the end of January I started your diet as it seemed like a easy way to lose weight and a lot of commonsense, some of which I was doing anyway, as I have always exercised regularly, but I was craving fatty foods and seemed to be always fighting the famine reaction. Through listening to my body I have got rid of most of the low-fat foods and I am now eating wholesome and nutritious foods (most of the time). Your toasted muesli is fantastic, I have it for breaky most days and I do not feel hungry until 3 pm some days. I have only lost 2 kilos and 2 cm in 3 months, but I don't feel like I am on a diet and I could easily do this for the rest of my life. Thanks for answering so many questions I have had about weight loss and I will never go on another milkshake or low-carb diet again. "