I love celebrating women’s good news.

But here’s the thing I have to declare I have a wee bug bear that I have to share….

Too many women feel they can only celebrate success if the scales tell them to do so.

You see every week I hang out with the most extraordinary women who work incredibly hard all week hydrating, nourishing, exercising, appreciating and enjoying their life.

They jump on the cardio equipment with me or online in one of our groups and share  they have more energy,  feel fitter,  feel healthier, feel stronger,  are relaxing more and are feeling good.   Sometimes they are feeling great.   Their faces light up and the smile beam from ear to ear as they share this good news.

Then the dreaded question (dreaded for me…).  Are we weighing today?   I feel my body shudder… I feel my whole body  do a small convulsion and I am the one weighing not the weighee .. I seriously feel like one of the executioners from game of thrones…  Because I know that in exactly two minutes the result can make or break my beautiful LeapStars day.

I do because my clients ask and it’s expected that a trainer who is supporting weight loss will weigh but I have realised I have done it reluctantly and in the end probably doing is as a disservice to my authentic self.    I haven’t weighed myself for years.   I stand on the scales for my medical professionals to work out dosage – but I never look.   I let other things determine my mood for the day.    I let my clothes and bra size tell me how I am doing and if I am track.

It hasn’t been an easy journey,  I have relapses,  especially on good days,  especially when I feel so good maybe I should seek some validation from what I knew for 25 years … Maybe the scales will tell me something better than I feel.     After all the world seem to put an huge amount of weight – excuse the pun – on the result too.   You don’t need to look far to find good new headlines of “she lost x amount.” It’s everywhere – society, media and throughout my industry

So I take my clients off their cardio equipment and watch silently in horror as dread starts to fall over their faces,  as they take their shoes and sock off and gingerly stand by a piece of glass, with nuts and bolts and some beeping buttons.     They rush to the loo,  take of another layer and mumble how they shouldn’t have eaten breakfast.    And I have encouraged it – for five years I have been part of this ridiculous ritual.    Before that I was asking others to do this for me it 25 years of terror or joy depending on the number flashing back at me.    And then we celebrated if it went down and grappled with the disapproving look down the nose of someone else if it went down.

My ladies do nothing more than weigh there self esteem.     If the number is up or down or bang on the same does it really reflect how you are?  Where you are at?   We know when our clothes are tight,  when we are dehydrated, when we puff at the top of hill.  From where I stand weighing is a pretty inaccurate measure of how you really are.

Wouldn’t it be a good day if we paid attention to what is happening to what is happening IN your body, in your life and focus on what we can change because of real tangible things.   What if we paid attention to habits and what you are doing consistently to make real change in the way you live and feel.  What if we measured our water intake every day and it makes our body feel instead of jumping naked in secret on the scales!!

It’s time to create real change!  We need to get real.  We need to do the small things regularly,  measure them in real ways,  understand the result, and adjust if we don’t feel happy about it!   Then we will really celebrate!