On our first day on earth one of the first facts about us is our weight. And life after that continues in a similar fashion, it is easy to get sucked into the idea that your weight is a very important thing about you. Society puts so much pressure on both men and women to be a particular weight and this can be damaging to those of us who have had bariatric surgery.
It is so easy after surgery to become the type of person who needs to weigh themselves daily. And if those scales don’t go down it can affect our entire day. For most of us it has been ingrained that being a certain weight is desirable and not being that weight will have negative effects on our whole life. This can actually create its own set of bad habits – we set unrealistic goals for ourselves and punish ourselves for not meeting them. We can eat perfectly and still the scales remain the same. Even worse than this, sometimes the scales go up! After this we can spiral, give up, stop trying and let the emotional eating commence. It can feel like a never ending cycle.
Of course the scale has to play some part in your life post bariatric surgery, it is the reason we chose to have the surgery in the first place and a way to measure its success. You need to find what works for you. If you find that your motivation is suffering because of the scales then put them away for a little bit.
There is so much more for you to be proud of on this journey! Remind yourself of those non-scale victories, and how far you have come since you started, measure yourself and set different goals like how active you will be that day or week and focus on fitness, diet and health and most importantly, have faith in yourself and trust the process.