Today I want to stand with a friend of mine who shares with me an interest in Intuitive eating what we feel is right for ourselves and our bodies, when we feel it is right for us, rather than dieting mentality, and declare that 'scales are for fish', as she also has written in her blog, and I will also stop weighing myself.

Why?

Well I have had a lot of blood test results this month that have turned my ideas of what is a healthy diet, for me,  near upside down.  I have discovered that I am not metabolising iron normally and I am in iron overload and need an low iron and iron absorbing, lower Vit C as that increased iron absorption, diet and I just discovered with a shock yesterday that despite leading an active outdoors life with sun exposure, I have a vitamin D deficiency.  Now dropping foods I am used to eating like red meat out of my diet and limiting many other things till I discover the right balance for me, saw me gain about a kilo in weight this week and well, when you work at eating healthy and striving to eat when hungry and stop when satisfied and would be one of the most active 60 plus ladies around these parts any how, it's nothing short of disappointing and almost depressing to be hopping on scales only to see them climbing when you are simply in a learning what to do and how to manage with a whole new set of nutritional guidelines for health during this sorting out phase, and need to realize that a varying of weight in this learning phase, is not significant.

The bathroom scales do not applaud me for all Ive learned that's going to help build a fitter and trimmer body in the coming months once I have sorted out in particular this Vitamin deficiency, it only exaggerates the variation in weight due to my experiments with a new style of mostly vegetarian (low iron ) diet.

I will be using a set of scales to evaluate how I an going and I do want to focus on those scales frequently.

These scales will be in my mind.  i want to visualize to my left, the state I was in through much of my 50's while I gradually allowed myself to become more obese and unfit, in fact downright ill.  Never mind the excuses that illness and injury and excessive financial responsibility resulting in excess work load created that state, those were all excuses for what was a state of apathy and self abuse through self neglect.  I never want to go there again.  That was the behaviour that resulted in my becoming morbidly obese at a size 22 going on 24 on a short 160 cm frame.  

To the right of that, I see myself as a child, malnourished, then as a slim woman on my first crash diet for the size xssw wedding dress to become even slimmer, even then no one seemed to see this was for me too thin, family and friends added pressure that it wasn't as slim as a young woman should be, even skinny arms and ribs sticking out wasn't thin enough for society's expectations,  not while you still had hips thighs and a healthy behind, they did not think you slim, no the pressure was on to be waste yourself away thin.  This was before society became aware of the existence of anorexia as young women bought in to this pressure for a straight up and down, hip less, bottomless, fashionable boy like figure.

In my 30's I went on juice fasts, and 12 week diet pans, yes of course I lost weight, you do when you semi starve yourself, that isn't learning a thing about weight management and heaven only knows how much muscle and bone density I lost doing those things to my body.

So the scales I use today are the ones that see, apathy through to self abusive neglect of emotional eating and lack of physical activity on one side of a balance scale, the anxiety of worry about having gained a kilo or more and the obsessive extremes of dieting or seeking rapid weight loss from extremes of activity or deprivation dieting and excessive rules, as an extreme I do not want to go near, on the other hand. 

In the middle ground, is confidence, and yes, I have my 'feeling fat days', too, so sometimes I might need to bluff, fake, imagine in my mind, this confidence and serenity and believe, until it once again as it has been before, becomes a part of my, a confidence to love my body, love my self, my mind, my creativity, my owning the right to be me, to move my body, to take time to exercise, the belief I have the right to and I do take the time to go to the Katherine Hot Springs at mid day for my swim.

Why is it when i return home from these Australian tours, having established a pattern of walking and swimming and lifting  my weights, I suddenly deny myself the right to take this time to be active, i make excuses again, carer duty excuses?  This is just another form of apathy at best and self abuse from laziness of taking the easy way out and not planning and managing  how I will take this time for myself and a failure to expect that I will take this time and if I do not believe in my own rights, how can I expect someone else who is unwell to understand my need to be active in a supportive environment for some part of every day?  No one denies me the right to do as I need to, more than I do myself, to believe otherwise is the old 'excusitis', I left behind me and intend to not return to.   I am telling the  me of six months hence, that that is carp, it is self abuse, apathy and it is throwing the scales off balance and this time I will not be standing for that sort of apathetic behaviour from myself and will call it for what it would be, if I wanted to do that, not being a god carer, it would be self abuse and remind myself that in order to care for another I must first be fit and healthy myself and not allow myself to destroy myself prematurely through lifestyle diseases and neglect of my bodies most basic needs of good nutrition and healthy active movement.

So there in words I've strive to paint a picture of the balance scale that will be my guide to a healthy life from now on and will assist me to be my natural slim and healthy self.

I will design a fridge magnet, depicting this scale visually in time for my 2009 Christmas Internet sales and my 2010 touring exhibition.