episode 139: how to measure progress without the scale
On episode 139 of The Diet Diaries I’m talking about what progress looks like beyond the numbers. Beyond the scale, the clothing size and the tape measure.
Because I’d argue that’s where the real work happens. That’s where behavior is transformed, where the body confidence is built, where the skills are learned. The numbers are a byproduct of all of that.
I’ve had several clients finish up personalized coaching after 4-14 months of work and their transformations have been incredible to witness. I hope this episode shows you that the transformations you can’t see are actually the most powerful.
In today’s episode you’ll hear:
How to spot the difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset
Ways to measure progress without numbers
Former clients’ progress in their own words
How long progress takes
The one thing you need to get started
How to know if you are improving body confidence and body image issues
How to identify your limiting beliefs and stories
If you’re ready to believe that change is possible for you, that’s all you need to get started. You can schedule a free call here so we can get to know each other and talk more about how personalized coaching works using my Eat with Ease framework. No obligation—just a chat to see if this is the right fit.
This blog gives lots of great tips for working on fat loss without dieting and episode 133 of The Diet Diaries talks through 3 key skills to help make change easier.
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Welcome to the Diet Diaries, a podcast where we have candid, heartfelt conversations that will help you figure out what, why and how to eat so you can feel amazing in your body, because it's time to break the all or nothing mindset of yo-yo dieting, food obsession and feeling ruled by the scale. I'm your host, body image and nutrition coach, jordana Edelstein. I'm so happy you're here. Hey friends, it's episode 139 of the Diet Diaries. I don't think I have any announcements today to get started with. If you're watching this on YouTube, which I don't think many of you are, I'm holding my phone in my hand because there's some things I'm going to share from there today as we kind of dive in. So, actually, what today's episode is about is about what progress looks like when you are working on making changes around your relationship with food and your body, and part of this is in the context of what it's like to do one-on-one coaching or any type of coaching, and what kind of inspired this is. Well, I guess many factors. Many of us, just as humans, struggle to recognize and identify progress, and we are especially used to only being able to acknowledge progress as numbers. How much weight did I lose on the scale? What size clothing am I fitting into? How many inches did I lose off my waist? And those are valid and real, can be valid and real measures of progress, but they are not the only measures of progress, and that's the thing, because you can be making progress in one area and not see any progress with another measure, and vice versa. It is not an either or it is a both and and. So when we look at progress and we talk about progress and we talk about change, we want to be looking at that across multiple different measures and multiple different categories and looking at the whole picture, not just one thing. Because the truth is, when you are working to make changes around food and your body and if that loss is a goal for you, you can be making so much progress and not see any changes on the scale, and that does not mean that nothing is happening. It means that changes on the scale happen slowly and they take a lot of time, and that there may be other physical changes happening that are not reflected on the scale.
02:31
I'm going to do a separate episode about the scale. That's not really what this is about. I've had several clients finish up one to one coaching in the last few weeks, month or two, and so I wanted to share what their transformations and what their progress has looked like so you can hear for yourself. I talk about this a lot because I've been through it, but I think there's tremendous value in hearing it from other people who have just been through it, who are not me, right, who are not the coach, who are the people like living their lives and figuring this out which I am doing too, but I also now do it for a living and these are people who ranged from working from four months together to 14 months together, right, I would. The average is somewhere in that six to 12 month range, but it can go a little bit shorter, it can go a little bit longer, and so I wanted you to really hear it from them, because we kind of believe that we are just, we're very fixed.
03:32
This is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I've always been. I am someone who, right, we have a very what's called fixed mindset about who we are and what we are capable of, and part of the work around coaching is to start to learn how to shift more into a growth mindset that you are capable of change that. With effort, with learning, with work, you are capable of changing the way you respond to your thoughts, the way you perceive your body, the way you feel around food, the way you feel about exercise. Right, and I'm talking about it in the context of the work that I do, but this applies to everything in life. Right, this is growth mindset versus fixed mindset, not a new concept. I'm sure you've heard about it before. But the reason I wanted to do this episode is because, especially around food and around body image, most of us are very fixed. This is how I am. This is how I've always been.
04:27
I am not someone who can eat just one cookie. I I'm either all in or all out. I'm not someone who can do moderation. I have to be good all week and then have a cheat day on the weekends. I can't have dessert every day. I can't have just one thing. I can never have pizza, I can never have sugar, because I will binge it. Right, this is who I am and I totally get why I was like that too, because every all the tools that have existed kind of up until this point have reinforced that, because they've been all or nothing right. They've been rigid, restrictive diets which have you cut things out, and then, because you are a human being, not a robot, you are only able to do that for so long. Then you kind of binge on that thing and you tell yourself the story oh look, I did it again. This is why I can't be around this thing. This is why I have to be on a diet.
05:18
The diet is actually what's causing that problem. It's not you. It's because you never learned the skills, or you had them when you were really young, and because you grew up in a world that's all about changing your body and being smaller. They were kind of stripped away from you without you even knowing it. So all of these clients and myself started from a place where it's like this isn't gonna be possible. I'm not gonna change. This is just how I am, and that's why you jump from diet to diet, because there's a safety and there's a comfort and there's a familiarity in that. This is. I know that I can't, you know, let's say, have ice cream in the house. So I'm gonna do a diet that's like yep, that kind of like reinforces that. Or that's like, oh, you can only have dessert like once on the weekends. Or, oh, you can only buy this kind of like sugar-free, fat-free ice cream or whatever it is. There's no room for choices, there's no room for autonomy.
06:13
So, as I kind of share some of these things and we talk about, like, what progress looks like, right, there's progress around skills. There's progress around increasing confidence. There's progress around increasing your capacity to tolerate discomfort. There's progress around resiliency about what happens when something doesn't go the way that you wanted it to go, how you keep going after that. There's progress around moving away from being having an on-track, off-track mindset to a keep going mindset. There's progress around starting to not think as much around foods as being good or bad, but thinking about foods as having jobs and being either calorie dense or some combination of calorie dense and nutrient dense. There's progress around having less negative self-talk and learning how to respond to that negative self-talk in a way that continues to move you forward. There's progress around having more self-compassion. Right, progress is not just about the number on the scale, the number in the tag of your pants and the number on the measuring tape.
07:15
I would argue, I will argue till I die that everything I just listed, those eight or nine things, are more significant and valuable measures of progress than those other three numerical pieces of data, because the truth is, you can change the number on the scale, you can change the tag on your parents without changing any of this other stuff at all and, honestly, that's what a diet is. That is why you keep having to go through that again and again, and again, because until you make progress, until you do the work to change and improve your skills around eating, build more confidence, build more capacity, none of those other external changes will be permanent. So here are some things I wanted to share with you. This is a text that I got from a client. This is back in January, because we finished working together much earlier this year and we worked together for about seven, eight months. And here's what she said it will definitely get easier because I will keep proving to myself that I can do it, because this time around I'm enjoying the process and not just the outcome. Not that the number on the scale is a huge priority for me, but I'm officially 50 pounds down as of today from my heaviest ever weight. I've gotten to 48 pounds down before in a completely obsessive and unhealthy way of over-exercising and over-restricting and stop gaining 40 of it back and never thought I could get here again, let alone in a sustainable and healthy way. I'm truly mind blown, not to set the number on the scale, but how much I'm loving the process this time around and all of the other mental, emotional, physical growth I've had along the way.
08:56
So, again, this was a client who was working on fat loss and nutrition and body image because, yes, you can work on all of them at the same time, contrary to popular anti-diet culture belief, and she had done the thing right. Where you restrict and you're rigid, yeah, the weight comes off, but because you don't make any of those mindset, we can kind of lump them together as mindset changes and have progress there. None of it sticks. So now that she took the time to do that work and really understand, like, how to incorporate more protein, how to have bigger meals and smaller snacks and these were some of the specific things we worked on together how to have really specific skills around responding to negative body image in terms of how she was using clothes to kind of get dressed, the language she was using to talk to herself that's what makes the change permanent, right. That is how we need to start measuring progress.
09:52
So another one that I wanted to share with you. This is from a client we worked together for just a short period of time because she had some life circumstances that unfortunately meant she wasn't able to continue, but she said I was going to reach out to you. Last week I went to a retirement party and I felt really good about my appearance. I usually just feel self-conscious and quote fat. I lost a few pounds, but not that many, but enough to feel really more physically comfortable, right? So this is about how she's feeling in her own skin. This wasn't about oh, I lost, I have to lose X number of pounds in order to feel good. Right, she lost less weight than she probably thought she needed to to feel different in her body. Right, she was able to pay attention and really notice what was happening in her own skin and how was she? How was that kind of reflected like in her confidence that we don't need these drastic physical changes that we think we need, that we're told we need, in order to feel better? Sometimes we don't need them at all. Sometimes we need just a little bit, right, and these are all very nuanced, specific situations, but I just want to share these with you so you can start to understand again, when we're so used to seeing progress as numbers and data, what does it look like when it's not that? This was from another client she shared. This was on a text message. I started doing a strength training group at a gym and previously I would have said to myself you need to go every day. Now I can say, let's see how it feels today. Part of the same text Also.
11:26
If I have a dessert, I'm pausing afterwards I say, quote, I'm not going to die if I don't have more. I came up with a little mantra I've had it before, I'll have it again, but right now I'm working on healing. This is really powerful stuff, you guys, to be able to save yourself around desserts or whatever your trigger food is. I'm not going to die if I don't have more. This is the game changer stuff. You know how that feels when you have the food. That feels really tough for you and you feel like you can't have more. You want to have more but you, you quote. You know you quote shouldn't or you're not allowed. You literally feel like you can't.
12:07
That discomfort is so intense. You feel like you cannot. You don't know how you're going to navigate the next minute, five minutes, an hour. Without that it's crazy. When you look at it objectively you're like, oh my God, it's just dessert. But when you were in the moment you know how that feels. It's a really uncomfortable feeling. So to be able to acknowledge that and I and she self identified those tools right as a result of the work we did in coaching, she was able to really see like, okay, this is really about discomfort. How can I give myself a tool and a way to navigate and sit in that discomfort? And it's simply by saying to yourself I'm not going to die if I don't have this. It's not dramatic, that is real, that is how it feels.
12:47
And validating and acknowledging that feeling and we're giving and responding to that thought actually kind of calms the nervous system and it provides a sense of safety in a situation where it can feel very unsafe and very unfamiliar. And just knowing and this is part of this is also about giving yourself unconditional permission right when we are in that diet place and it's restriction and it's rules and it's be good during the week and have your cheat day on the weekends. You live and die for that cheat day and you have to cram everything into that one day because you can't have it again for a week, and that is a feeling of just panic and misery and unsettledness and, oh my God, I would remember as I got to the end of my cheat days, I would just eat food, to eat it because it was my last chance. And that feeling of scarcity is terrifying and your nervous system feels that right. That's not just something that like, is an emotion that goes throughout your body, that you feel that level of scarcity and urgency and when you, this is what unconditional permission is. I've had it before, I'll have it again, right. But right now, in this moment, I'm working on healing. I don't need to have more of that thing right now. I can have more tomorrow if I want it, right.
14:03
This is not about saying, oh, this is a free for all and yes, if you want to eat 25 cupcakes every day, go for it, right. That's not really going to have much of a positive outcome. It's about giving yourself permission and structure and a way to kind of have some. I sometimes I'll call them guardrails, like give yourself some boundaries around that unconditional permission. Right, she's giving herself permission to eat. This was around, kind of like desserts and sweets were the thing that were really challenging for her to have in her house and she's given herself permission to eat it and in doing so she's also acknowledging you know, I actually don't need or want this right now, because I know that if I want it tomorrow I can have it. Sometimes we think we need all of it now because we are afraid that we, when we tell ourselves we can't have it tomorrow, then we do want all of it now. It is not until you give yourself the permission to have the things that you actually realize you don't want it as much as you thought you did. It is a total oxymoron. I will say that again it is not until you give yourself permission to eat to the things, whatever those things are for you chips, desserts, pizza, pasta give yourself permission to eat that that you then realize you don't want it as much as you thought you did.
15:20
Progress that's what progress looks like. A couple of other things I wanted to share with you. I have to navigate on my computer here. Where is the thing that I wanted? So this was a client. We worked together for about four to five months and this was really just about prioritizing satisfaction of food, noticing her tendency to really rely on food suites for comfort and feel kind of out of control around some of those foods, and here's what she shared. I have awareness combined with action. I'm able to pause before I eat. I'm portioning what I eat more frequently. I'm thinking about why I am selecting those items. I'm at peace with incorporating some of the quote bad labeled foods into my routine. This is what progress looks like. This client did not need to lose fat. That loss was not a part of this is all. This was all about mindset and relationship to food. Awareness combined with action, pausing portion size. Why am I selecting these things? Being at peace with incorporating what I thought were bad foods, moving away from that good, bad mentality. These are things that stay with you, because she worked on the skills that allowed her to make that progress. Again, it's like I'll keep saying this until I'm blue in the face.
16:43
Progress is not just numbers. Progress is not just a scale. Progress is not just your pant size. Progress is not just a tape measure. Progress is how you feel around food, the way you think about food.
16:54
One of the last things I wanted to share, of course, this. One can't figure out how to get back to this thing. Hold, please, while I do this. Sorry guys, I don't edit things like this out, because this is just like how real life goes. This is from a client we worked together for 14, 13, 14 months and what she shared has been, you know, some of her major progress was low to no anxiety around food and movement. I never imagined this would be possible, given where I started from the competent competence to tackle difficult and uncomfortable situations around food. I've also drastically improved self-compassion and gaining a new perspective on life, food, relationships, body image and movement. I want to repeat part of what she said again, I never imagined this would be possible, given where I started from.
17:57
At the top of this podcast, I talked about feeling that way. We all feel that way. If you are listening to your this podcast, if you follow me on social media, if you get my emails, you are 99% someone who has felt that way about food, about weight, about body image. This is how I am. It's never going to change. I am someone who can't do this or can do that. We're very fixed, and so that's why this, this, was so powerful for her because she took a leap of faith. Sometimes doing this work is a leap of faith. Right, it's. It's just opening the door to the possibility. Right, it's about possibility.
18:38
And I wanted to do this episode and I wanted to talk about progress. I wanted to share some of these specific feedback, direct from clients, so that you know what is possible for you, because we very often believe that not much is possible for us, that we are relegated to being stuck on a diet, to constantly saying I can't have carbs, I can't have dessert, whatever the thing is, whatever the restriction is. We believe that that is the only way that we can get through this world without feeling totally out of control and spun out around food, and it's the only way we can control our bodies. And all you need is to believe that something else might be possible. And once you open the door for that, floodgates open and so much happens. Does it take time? Yes, there are no quick fixes. There is no instant gratification. I will always be upfront.
19:36
This client and I work together for over 13 months, but she is in her mid 30s, right? So you think about this had been nearly a lifetime of struggles for her and in 13 months she made a massive amount of progress that she will carry forward with her. She gonna have to keep doing the work. Yes, everyone does. No box gets checked right, so there is no end goal. When I talk about progress, progress is in and of itself like dynamic. All these things I listed off around more competence, more capacity, more resiliency, shifting your on track, off track mindset and good bad foods. That all requires ongoing work. You will do that work forever. What happens is the work gets easier and it takes less effort. Those are kind of the same thing takes less energy over time and that might even flow right. There might be some periods of your life where actually does take more energy because life.
20:35
But when we let go of hitting a destination, when, when think about a time when you have gone on a diet and lost weight and you've hit maybe your goal weight, how did you feel when you got there? Were you stressed about maintaining it? What happened when the scale started to go up? How did you feel? You felt pretty shitty and you probably panicked and you're like, oh my God, what is happening? Because there were no skills in place to, because you didn't use a skill to get there right, you just followed rules. Right, great rule follower. But because you didn't learn skills. There's no autonomy, there's no choice, there's no intention. When those rules aren't in place, you don't know what to do because there is no box that gets checked right. When you hit that number on the scale that you think is going to fix everything, it's not the end, right, because then what happens? Then you start panicking.
21:25
Now I remember when I did isagenics and I got to my lowest adult weight, all I wasn't like, oh my God, I'm so happy to be here. I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do? How am I going to maintain this? What if I gain the weight back? How am I not going to gain the weight back? I gained the weight back, of course, because I didn't have any skills. I didn't know what to do if I wasn't drinking those shakes and skipping meals and only being allowed to eat green apples. It's not sustainable.
21:51
Progress continues. You continue to make progress for the rest of your life, and that's actually really cool. That is part of this growth mindset. Right, there's no end, there's no destination. Sometimes I think at first that can feel terrifying, but it's also really freeing. Right, you don't have to get to this place. There's no magical destination where everything just gets better and everything is wonderful. It gives you the freedom and the space and the time to just go and see what happens and to keep going and to be a human. There's a lot of freedom in that, in taking away that urgency and that destination and that specific goal number and focusing more on the actions and the effort. That's what you can control. That's a lot of what we do in coaching is.
22:48
It's all about skills, it's all about effort, it's all about action. The outcomes that come can be amazing and wonderful. Fat loss is absolutely one of them. When fat loss comes as a byproduct of this effort and this action, that is when it sticks, that is when it lasts. You will feel you won't have that panic that you have when you go on a diet and you get to your goal. Wait about how am I going to maintain this? That won't be there because you will have the confidence and the capacity and the resiliency, all these other measures of progress. You will have that within you and you will be able to make choices and respond as things happen. That's really everything I wanted to share today. I will say, if you're listening to this or you've been listening and you want to make changes but you're scared and you've been doing diets and you've been losing weight but then gaining it and you're like I want to make a change but I don't know. And what is coaching about? Set up a discovery call, let's talk. There's no obligation from that. It's just a way to connect for you, to share what's going on with you, to share what's going on with you, to talk about the coaching process and see if it's a good fit.
24:05
Coaching is life-changing. I say that as someone who has been coached and has had my life changed, and I say that because I have the privilege and the honor of witnessing and watching people do this. I'm just going to share something that a client wrote as she finished up. This is the same client that we worked together for over a year about 13, 14 months. I just wanted to share what she wrote so that you know what's possible for you. That is why I share all of this.
24:37
Being with Jordana has changed my life. I never thought or believed I was capable of change around nutrition and exercise, from restriction and emotional eating to decreased anxiety around certain types of food and freedom and freedom from obsessive thoughts and habits. It's apparent Jordana selflessly loves to help people find the other side of disordered eating habits. I felt so safe, cared for and seen during my 13 months with her. I will never forget this life-changing experience.
25:03
I just want you to know, wherever you are right now, if you're like this is never going to change. I'm always going to feel trapped around food. I'm always going to feel obsessed with food. I'm always going to be counting calories in my head. I'm always going to be panicked about what the scale says. I'm always going to be terrified of gaining weight. I'm never going to be able to lose weight. I'm always going to hate my body. I'm never going to like how I look. I'm never going to feel comfortable in my skin. Change is possible for you for every one of those things that I just listed off. It is possible If you give yourself the self-compassion to open the door for it. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I will see you guys. Talk to you next week.
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