Don’t want big accomplishments to feel good and celebrate your progress, especially when you’re working towards healing your relationship with food. At the beginning of my intuitive eating journey, it all felt very vague because I had shifted away from a weight goal. This led to embracing non-scale victories to bring more celebration and focus on progress to my intuitive eating journey.
Keep reading for a list of non-scale victories, how to use them, and why they matter when healing your relationship with food.
List of non-scale victories for an intuitive eating journey
Non-scale victories can be anything. Truly anything. Little wins offer you more to celebrate and feel positive about. So nothing is too small and the more you celebrate everything, the more you have to celebrate.
Examples of non-scale victories:
- Going for a walk
- Honoring your hunger or fullness cues for a meal
- Stretching
- Doing a workout
- Completing a task you’ve been working on
- Practicing more self-compassion
- Doing a 5k
- Finishing a home project
- Buying clothes that feel comfortable, good on your body, and you like
- Taking time to meditate or slow down
- Taking time to rest without guilt
Really, truly, these non-scale victories can be anything.You don’t want to wait until the end of a big goal to feel good and like you’re winning, so that is the whole purpose here. Life happens in between the big moments and milestones. Feeling positive in between bigger moments builds more momentum for a positive relationship with yourself.
That’s why when you’re healing your relationship with food, exercise, and your body after years of chronic dieting, finding joy in little moments makes all the difference. The little moments make up your relationship with each of those areas. So learn to celebrate them.
How to celebrate little victories
The answer will be different for everyone because what’s rewarding and fulfilling to one person may be unappealing to someone else.
When I was dieting, I had limited creativity about celebrations. I was so weight-focused I’d only be able to think of doing a new fitness class or buying new clothing for my new weight.
But that’s not how I approach celebrating today. It’s actually gotten a lot more simple now, but feels so much more joyous.
My first way to celebrate may seem a little boring, but once you learn it it just feels exciting. It’s simply reflecting on the win and feeling the energy of the victory. Too often we reach milestones and are mentally on to the next goal or task the second we achieve the first. Most people don’t take time to be in their current win so taking even just a few minutes to celebrate, congratulate yourself, reflect on the energy it took to create, and just have the win feels amazing.
So option one, is simply a little mental congratulations to yourself and feeling the positive emotions and joy of that win. Sometimes I also will grab a notebook to write out 3 things I’m grateful for in the experience just to set the tone of the positive mindset to celebrate.
But you can also celebrate in other ways like a favorite tea or coffee, meal, calling a friend to tell them, having friends over, buying yourself something you’ve been wanting, planning a trip, taking a few days off work, watching a new or favorite movie, and really just whatever resonates with you have a rewarding way to celebrate.
Why non-scale victories matter when healing your relationship with food
When I was dieting my primary concern was the number on the scale. I focused all my attention on getting to my goal weight that it felt like the sole purpose of any healthy habits. And when I didn’t see progress on the scale, I would get disheartened and want to throw in the towel.
But weight is just the wrong place to focus our attention. It can almost do more harm than good. A small percentage of people may be successful in weight loss (and maintaining that loss), but for most people, it leads to yo-yo dieting with their weight fluctuating up and down. Research shows that a balanced diet and regular physical activity reduce the risk for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, regardless of any changes in weight.
I often share this example with clients who have a challenging time letting weight loss be the answer. When I worked as a registered dietitian in hospitals, we’d often have patients losing weight, but they weren’t getting any healthier because of it. They’d end up feeling weaker and more sick. Yes, it’s because they were losing muscle and had an illness, but if weight loss itself was always healthy then wouldn’t it still help in some way?
Culture taught us to desire weight loss as the magic answer to loving our body, perfect health, happiness, a good relationship, and all of those promises. But weight is as simple as it’s made out to be. Your weight isn’t just how many calories you eat and burn. It’s influenced strongly by genetics and other factors, like environment, sleep, stress, hormones, etc.
Plus there isn’t one size that’s healthy, you can be healthy at the size that’s good for your body (and that could change over time). That’s why it’s so useful for your health and your relationships with exercise, food, and your body to focus on the parts that actually matter.
Research shows that a health-at-every-size and intuitive eating approach helps improve
- Eating attitudes and practices
- Body image
- Physical capacity
- Health-related quality of life
Non-scale victories matter when healing your relationship with food because it’s essentially positive reinforcement for yourself. They’re opportunities to start looking for positive things in your health, movement, and eating habits.
As the saying goes “what you focus on expands”. Wins are a chance to celebrate the things you want more of in your life propels you to create more of that in your life.
Reflection
I want to leave you with an activity you can do to reflect on non-scale victories and expand your focus beyond weight. Grab a piece of paper and answer the questions below. If you’d like a worksheet version of the activity grab a copy of the PDF here.
Feel free to only answer questions from the sections that resonate with you. If you’ve already released the weight focus, then move ahead to other sections.
Releasing weight focus
- Why do you think it’s important to focus on weight?
- How has that impacted your life?
- How would your life be different if you didn’t focus on weight?
Non-scale victories reflection
- What are 3 good things about the win/experience?
- What’s one positive way this impacted your life?
- How did you create this win?
- Describe 3 things you learned from this experience.