The Scale

It is such an insignficant piece of metal, plastic with some numbers on it. Yet it can evoke such emotion, pain, frustration, joy, happiness or accomplishment. It has the power to make a day good or bad. We have a history, that scale and I.

Between the ages of 9 and about 17, I was a judo competitor. I traveled around to local, national and international competitions. One competes in a weight class in judo. As the years went on and the competitions got to a higher level I would need to lose weight, to participate in a certain weight class. I remember quite vividly donning a plastic suit, heading into a sauna with a cup to spit in. I was told to cut 5 or 8 pounds in the next 2 hours. I usually did what I was told. The end result, a "good" weigh in. The right number on the scale. A good scale.

Jump forward a few, if not 15 years, I gained some weight after getting married and having children. I joined a popular weight loss program (or a few weight loss programs). The programs inevitably focused on weighing in a certain number of times a week. I began to have scale anxiety. The scale had the power to make me starve the day of a weigh in. That number labeled my week as a "good" or a "bad" week. Leaders of these programs encouraged me to use the number as a tool to see what I did right and what I did wrong during the week. I rebelled. Gained more weight. Felt worse about myself. Ate more.

The cycle started - weigh myself, feel bad. Feel bad, eat more. Eat more, weigh more. Starve myself, weigh myself. Lose weight, still feel bad. Wait a minute---how is that so? Why if I was losing weight was I still feeling icky. Exhausted from following meal plans and exercise plans and thinking about food more and more I began searching for something totally different.

So, I started reading Geneen Roth's "Women Food and God." I really have identified with her work. I won't go into all of her thoughts here but suffice it to say that she believes that you are worth more than a number on a scale. All that I am, all that I have acheived cannot be measured in the pounds I do or do not have on my body. She recommends taping an "ideal" number on the scale. But the root of the work is mindfullness. Being mindful of what you are actually hungry for. Being mindful of all of the thoughts going on in my brain. Meditating. Taking care of my body. Being grateful for having a body, this body.

So you may ask if I threw the scale away. Nope. It is still there on my bathroom floor, but I have not stepped on it for the past 4 months. Every morning I look at it, and every morning I choose not to step on it. Every morning I remind myself that I am more important than that number. Every morning I am grateful for all that I have. Every morning the scale reminds me of that.

Now that is a good scale.