On Breaking Up With the Scale

For a really long time I had a really unhealthy relationship with the scale.  I still do, and for that reason, I had to give it up. 

I've always had a scale.  Well, I take that back.  For two academic years and one semester, while I was living on campus for college, I didn't have one, but other than that a scale has always been a permanent fixture in every bathroom from the one in my parents house to the one that moved from bathroom to bathroom with me in my twenties.  When I combined households with my husband we ended up with two.  Then I got a really cool sponsored smart scale and brought that number to three.  For a while,  I even had two side by side so I could compare the numbers.  When they weren't side by side, it was part of my routine to weigh first thing in the morning on the scale in the master bath, then walk across the loft to the one in the other bathroom and weigh there.  When it was cold, I reluctantly stripped down to my underwear in a freezing house, then rushed to put my pajamas back on as quickly as possible afterwards.  It was mandatory.  As much as I usually dreaded the number I still had to know it.  That number decided everything.

The scale was like my crystal ball.  Would it be a good day or a bad day?  How much would I hate myself today?  How much fat would I see when I looked in the mirror? How many calories could I eat?  Some days once a day wasn't good enough.  I'd weigh in when I got home from work, after exercise, after dinner, before bed.  Nobody needs to know their weight that many times per day! If it went down I was glad, but no matter what I always wanted it lower.  If I maintained from day to day, it was better than gaining but, I'd have to be really careful so it would stay that way.  If it was higher I wanted to jump out of my skin, and that meant skipping out on a meal, or a snack.  That meant working out no matter how exhausted I was, even if I hadn't planned to or didn't have time.  The workout would have to be extra hard in hopes that the next day would yield a loss.  I did not understand the concept of normal daily weight fluctuations.  If the number went up I was getting fat.  This went on for years and years.  A mentally and physically exhausting numbers game that stopped being fun a long time ago.  A really bad game, I had no hope of winning yet couldn't stop playing.  The number was never good enough, and therefore I was never good enough.  I didn't know how to feel about myself or anything in life unless I knew how much I weighed.

Four years ago I made the decision to stop the hard core dieting and my relationship with the scale became even more contentious.  For two years the number I saw flashing back at me rose higher and higher.  I knew it was going to, but watching it happen was an entirely different thing.  Every morning I knew I was absolutely going to hate the number, and that there was nothing I could do about it, and yet every morning like clockwork I got out of bed in the morning, used the bathroom, and went straight to the scale.  Just like always, I had to know.  I knew it was time to work on having a better relationship with food, but I couldn't foresee a day when daily weigh ins were not part of my life.  Not knowing caused anxiety, and yet knowing made me feel worthless.  I couldn't win, and yet I accepted that weigh-ins were necessary.

Two years ago, I reached my highest weight.  It was so bad I cried.  I was disgusted, sad, and incredibly frustrated.  It was a lot about the number, but also because I had never been so out of shape in my life.  My body was holding onto every bit of food and every pound, in the most unflattering of ways.  It was piling on as fat, which couldn't be helped, but it was time to do something about it.  I spent the next ten months putting in a serious and consistent effort with diet and exercise.  I ate only whole foods, and focused on eating balanced and healthy macros.  I dined on grilled chicken until it was coming out of my ears and exercised until the cows came home.  The scale did not budge for two months, and it nearly did me in to work so hard and not see it reflected on the scale, or even the fit of my clothes, but I didn't give up.  The scale didn't budge, but it was paying off in other ways.  The ravenous no matter how much I stuff my face I'm always hungry hunger I dealt with off and on for the last year was gone.  I didn't bloat or constipate at the drop of a hat.  My digestion was better than it had been in years, and my metabolism slowly recovered. Eventually I saw a difference in measurements, and progress pictures don't lie.  I was toning up, trimming down, and when all was said and done I didn't lose that much weight, but my fat jeans were baggy and I was truly in the best shape of my life.  Throughout that process I wasn't a skinny girl trying to get skinnier.  I was trying to be the fittest and healthiest version of myself, and for better or worse, I do think the scale was an important part of that journey.   

Once my body settled on a comfortable weight, I finally experienced what it was like to exercise for health and enjoyment, and not necessarily just for a number on the scale.  Exercise was no longer just about cardio and burning the maximum number of calories.  Walking, yoga, and pilates were legitimate forms of exercise, and the number on the scale didn't drive me one way or the other.  I was eating without guilt and was a lot more flexible with my diet.  I knew what foods made me feel satisfied and I tended to gravitate towards them, yet I was okay with eating anything in moderation.  I had a much better relationship with food and I was feeling better about my body, but my relationship with the scale was just as obsessive as ever.  I still had to do it every day, but because I saw the number just as information, I felt that maintaining the habit was okay.   It wasn't a big deal if I was up a pound one day, or down another, because for the first time weight loss was not the goal.  It happened slowly at first, but by the following year the power of the almighty scale was creeping it's way back into my psyche.  It was starting to make me feel bad about myself.  I found myself weighing multiple times a day.  It started to affect decisions I made about what I would eat, how much and what type of exercise I would do.  Not in a big way, but still, it was happening.  I had been free from that line of thinking for a while, so I was very aware when it started happening again.  I knew it was all because of that number on the scale, and I also knew that it wasn't a healthy direction for me to go.

I used my trip to Germany as the starting point for breaking up with the scale.  First of all, I didn't think I would have access to one, but even after I found out there was a scale in my husband's apartment I had already decided that because I'd have so little control over my food and I was also going to quit tracking calories, not having a scale would be really good for me.  I didn't use it.  Not once.  For six weeks there was no weighing of food, or myself.  No calorie tracking.  I joyously ate my way through five European countries, and there was so much freedom in that.  For the first time in my life I was not a slave to the scale and it felt so amazing I knew I had to continue it at home.  I wasn't ready for a complete and total break up, but I found a happy medium that seems to be working well.  I weighed in when I got home from Germany; c'mon, I had to know.  I think anybody would want to know what six weeks of gelato and carbs would do.  I wanted the information, but I didn't want to know right then, so I did a blind weigh in.  I stepped on the scale, but didn't look at the number.  My weight was recorded in the phone app that goes with it.  I could look at it whenever I was ready, which turned out to be about a month later.  Of course I was happy to find that I had gained zero weight, but I did not want to jump back on the obsessive scale train.

I started out with once a week, but lately it's just been sporadically.  It's been really helpful not to know my weight on the day I weigh it.  Not knowing my weight every single day makes me less likely to obsess.  I have also continued not tracking calories.  Prior to this, I'd tracked my calories every day for as long as I could remember.  I am truly eating intuitively for the first time ever, which is a huge deal, because I never thought I could do that either.

Sometimes I look back on all those years of rigorous dieting and I really can't believe I put myself through all of that.  Or even how.   Over the years I've come to understand where the disordered thoughts come from, but making them disappear completely is a long term struggle.  When I'm at the weight that works for my body, it's way too high, but when I think back to my lowest weight, even then I wasn't satisfied.  I'm learning to accept that I might never like the number on the scale, but at the same time I have to be okay with it.  When the number creeps up I need to learn how to respond to that in a healthy non obsessive way.  Tracking calories and the scale are only as bad for you as you allow it to be. Will I track calories again?  Probably.  It's a useful tool for maintaining weight.  Will I ever get to a point where I don't weigh myself at all?  I don't know.  Only time will tell, but where I am right now is definitely progress.

I am still critical of my body.  There is still a part of me that will always wish to weigh less, but these days the part of me that wants to be healthy and happy speaks louder.  I'll call that a win.