Are you like so many who start their day by stepping on the scale? This is a habit for many people and it is no surprise since diet culture has convinced us that the number on the scale is the sole barometer that we use to measure health. But that is simply not true!
You can measure the success of your plant-based journey without ever stepping on the scale or using your weight or the size of your pants. Because so often, especially with dieting and diet culture, the scale seems to be the center of all of this. But if you’re wanting to get away from that, here are 10 other ways to measure your success that don’t involve the scale.
What we really want to focus on is how you feel.
In intuitive eating, the scale is a meaningless measure of what is truly important. Rather, with intuitive eating, the belief is that one of the most immediate ways to show respect to your body is to stop weighing yourself.
10 barometers can be quite a lot. So, to work with some of these different techniques, choose a couple that resonate specifically with you and start working on those. But let’s first address the elephant in the room. If you’re worried about your weight, how can you keep an eye on that without stepping on a scale? You’ll soon find out that there are so many other non-weight-related wins that you can have, so let’s break them down one by one.
Especially for those who have been dieting for years, it is the diet that dictates when you’re supposed to be hungry and when you’re not. Plus, it involves a lot of shame and guilt around being hungry. But if you learn to listen to your own hunger and fullness cues, this can be incredibly empowering. You’ll gradually be more attuned to how and when you feel hungry and how and when you feel full and satisfied.
Relying more on your internal cues versus external cues (i.e. dieting rules) is such a great measure towards the right path of paying attention to your body. In this particular situation, progress can be measured, where maybe you’re not as scared of hunger as you once were. This is a common and valid fear that arises from dieting because hunger is almost treated like a “bad” thing or something to have willpower over. As you become more attuned to your body’s needs and its biological cues, over time, you start to build trust with your body. That’s progress.
Number two of measuring progress is to let go of that inner critic. Maybe before, where you used to have a lot of negative things running rampant through your head, you’re able to redirect them or put a stop to them. Instead of letting diet rules, guilt, deprivation, fear or negative thoughts guide you, you’re flipping that script. Those inner mean girls or boys are no longer dictating what’s going on inside your head or influencing your thoughts. You’re really working hard to think differently and it’s a beautiful thing when you can make progress in that area.
For many of our clients, one of the first things they notice as they eat more plants and work on intuitive eating is an increase in energy. If you are eating things that are more aligned with you, you might notice that you feel a dark cloud being lifted. You have more energy after you eat, instead of feeling sluggish. So, instead of taking a nap after dinner, you might want to take a walk or read a book without falling asleep on the couch.
Depending on your lifestyle, you can enjoy the things that you like to do with all of that extra energy that you haven’t had before. As you become more in tune with what foods make you feel good and what foods make you happy, you’re more in tune with what your body’s needs as well as your energy levels. Paying attention to your energy levels is definitely a way to measure progress.
In this example, we’re not always turning to food to cope with our emotions. The goal is to never not use food to cope with emotions because emotions are heavily tied to food. And once food is no longer your number one coping mechanism, you’re making progress in fulfilling your needs and emotions in other ways.
A lot of times it’s just taking the time to identify that you’re having emotions and taking the time to feel them. Just taking a breath and then asking yourself what you want or need at that moment can be really helpful. So, if you’re able to do that and that’s different from decades of what you did before, celebrate it!
Have you ever gotten to the end of a meal and feel like you didn’t even taste the food or pay attention to how much you were eating? It’s just eating, right? A thing to tick off the list?
Not quite. The goal here is to be more present with your meals. Take your time eating (when you can), maybe practice gratitude for where that food came from, or work on engaging your senses – tasting your food, smelling it, looking at it, enjoying it, that is a great mindfulness practice.
And mindful eating can look different to everyone. Maybe you’re eating with fewer distractions. Maybe you’re actually taking the time to taste the food that you’re eating or taking an extra five minutes versus just eating in two minutes. Whatever that looks like for you, evolving in that practice is progress.
As you continue on this journey, you might start to enjoy movement again. Perhaps you’re trying out new movements that you never thought you would try before. You’re challenging yourself in that way like when you were a kid and would just go outside and play.
Your flexibility might be improving and you’re actually exercising for fun and not for punishment like you used to do when you were dieting. If you work out or move during the day, you do so because you actually enjoy it, and don’t think about burning calories. The idea here is that your view on movement is shifting to one that feels more aligned and joyful. It feels more intuitive than something that’s militant or a punishment.
If you want to use numbers without stepping on the scale, another great way to measure progress is taking a look at your lab results. Maybe your high cholesterol or high blood pressure is lowering. Those are the numbers that you can actually look at and use as a more accurate barometer for health, but they’re still not the only things that define success.
Because even for these numbers, food isn’t the only thing that affects them – it might be genetics, environment, or other lifestyle factors, just to name a few. But if you’re working on intuitive eating and on improving your relationship with food, these things could potentially lead to improving your lab markers, too.
Number eight is that digestion improves or maybe your bowel movements become easier to pass. This can also involve a decrease in bloating or simply being more regular. These are the kind of sensations where you often don’t really know how much they are affecting you until you start to feel better. And seeing an improvement in your digestion, feeling more comfortable in your body and spending less time on the toilet (or more time if you’re constipated), are great measures of success.
Sleep has such a huge effect on so many aspects of our life. How your skin looks, how much energy you have, as well as your digestion. Sleeping well seems like a small and simple thing, but it really spiderwebs out into many aspects of your life. If you can sleep better, your quality of life can really improve. And even though all those aspects mentioned are unique in ways to measure progress, they’re also intertwined.
As you start working on ditching diet culture and improving your relationship with food, your body image, and your self-worth, you’ll feel more confident when you’re working on these things. Over time, you’ll notice that improvement in confidence level in both yourself and your decision-making. And so many things are impacted by that. That is what’s going to push your life into the good to great column. It’s not going to be that number on the scale.
Those are the ten ways to measure success. To work with it effectively, pick a couple that resonate with you and start working on them or start using them as ways to measure your success throughout your journey. And say goodbye to your scale!
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