Stepping Off The Scales

Weight: it’s just a number, right? Actually, if we’re being technical, it’s a measure of force. It’s commonplace to hear someone say they want to loose ‘weight’. Now we all know what that means, but it’s an interesting way of putting it. Is that the real aim? To lose weight? Or if you felt healthier, fitter, your clothes felt a bit more comfortable, but your weight stayed the same, would you be happy?

Of course, because weight is measurable it is a good indicator, it’s data that we can interpret easily. So if you’re wanting to get slimmer, go down a dress size, lose body fat etc etc it makes sense to weigh yourself regularly to check how things are going; diet “clubs” base their weekly meetings around a weigh in because it keeps things in check, and encourages perseverance by showing people that their lifestyle changes are making a difference each week, however small. So in theory it’s good to weigh yourself, especially if you have certain goals.

But I think there’s the potential for weight to become more than a sensible measure.

Although it was by no means a cause, one thing that certainly fuelled my eating disorder was owning a set of scales. I’d never had my own, but now I did and they lived in my bedroom. To start with I weighed myself every so often, just out of interest. But that quite quickly turned into every morning. The first thing I did when I woke up was do 10 jumping jacks and then get on the scales. Then I recorded my weight for that day in my diary.

Every single day I hoped that the number would go down. And if it didn’t, I would panic. I’d do some extra jumping jacks, I’d go to the toilet and then I’d weigh myself again. I was completely tormented by this number. It could make or break my mood that day. I based my worth on it.

Then during my recovery, I did a 180 and became completely terrified of stepping on the scales altogether. As I was gaining weight I knew that if I saw it, the number right in front of my eyes, it would freak me out. I didn’t want to know how much I weighed because I knew I would be disgusted. Even when I wasn’t weighing myself regularly, the scales still had this power over me, the ability to make my heart beat a bit faster and literally refuse to stand on the scale in the doctor’s office.

But it’s just a number, right?

“Just a number” shouldn’t have the power to change how you feel about yourself. It shouldn’t ruin a perfectly lovely weekend of eating and drinking by making you dread weigh-in day. It shouldn’t make you think that you made a bad decision when you went for the half-fat rather than the fat-free yoghurt. It shouldn’t make you lose sight of why you started to make lifestyle changes.

More importantly, the number on the scales is not an indicator of you as a person, your worth or value. It can’t tell you whether you’re kind or caring, if you’ve given to charity recently or been compassionate to friends, whether you’re good at art or maths or giving advice. It’s really just a number and it’s so fickle that just taking your jumper off will change it.

Whether it’s an obsession with standing on them every day or never wanting to at all, an unhealthy relationship with our scales ultimately reflects an unhealthy relationship with ourselves. Why would you make changes to please the scales if you were happy in yourself? In reality, whatever that number is, it shouldn’t change much, if anything. Instead, we should measure how we feel, check in with ourselves once in a while: Am I feeling good? Am I making choices that are best for me? Am I happy?

I don’t actually own a set of scales anymore and I don’t feel the need to know my weight, but I like to think that if I did, it really wouldn’t phase me. I know that I am happy in my body now, and that I’m fit and healthy (I mean, I literally just ran a marathon), I don’t follow any sort of rules or regimes to stay like this, I maintain my weight whilst doing what I want when I want, so if this is the weight I need to be to feel like this, that’s absolutely fine by me.