Free Yourself from the Number on the Scale
What would happen if you didn’t weigh yourself for a week? a month? a year? Some of you reading this might be okay with that, others may be having a panic attack at the thought!
Three years ago I would have been part of the latter group.
In 2013, I was suffering from an undiagnosed eating disorder called OSFED and was struggling to manage a diagnosed depression. Today I am in recovery and continue to work hard to manage my depression.
This would have been my 2013 reaction:
That’s crazy. Why would you want to do that? How are you going to control your weight if you don’t even know the number? What if you started gaining weight and didn’t realize it?! It would be so much work to lose it again.
It is better to watch it every day to know if you are gaining or losing then you can adjust your diet and exercise to influence it. It is so important to stay below x pounds. Well it would be even better if I was under x-5 pounds, but at the very least I can’t go above x pounds. If I go above x pounds I will be fat. If I am fat people will not take me seriously. How can I be successful if I am fat?
Nope better to watch that weight everyday and make sure it stays below x!
If someone had pushed me and said “You are not allowed to weigh yourself for a year”, I would have physically felt sick with panic. The idea of not knowing what I weighed would have been nothing short of terrifying.
I am sure that many women today can relate to this, not just those who have experienced eating disorders.
This is in stark contrast to my thoughts on the scale today. I have not weighed myself since April of 2016. I do not know what I weigh and it has given me a new peace in my life. I had to work hard to get there, but it was worth it.
Here are some of the thought processes I went through to get there. Maybe they will help you too.
Why is this number so important to us, especially in western cultures?
Because it is a 60 Billion dollar a year industry in the US alone. The people trying to sell you their products want you to feel bad about your number so that you will buy their products to change your number. Celebrities want you to feel bad about that number because they get paid to endorse those products.
The TV and Film industry want you to feel bad about that number because they sell advertising placements or adds to the companies that make diet products. They want you to be unhappy. The more dissatisfied you are with that number the more money you will spend to change it.
What does that number actually tell you?
Did you know your weight can change, just by being in different places on earth?
Weight is a measure of the force on the object caused by a gravitational field.
So the weight of a person is the value measured at the Earth’s surface. However, the gravitational pull has a different value on the equator, than it does at the poles. So theoretically just by going to another place your weight changes.
Does that mean you change as a person from one place to the other? Does your value as a person change because your weight changed?
Of course not. All it means is the number that represents your weight on earth at that spot changed.
How is this different from it changing when you don’t move locations? If your mass goes up or down then your weight changes too. Do you fundamentally change as a person if that changes? Does your value as a human change if your mass changes and thus affects how much you weigh on earth? The Diet industry would have you think so.
Does your weight tell you if you are smart, kind, courageous, funny, artistic, or worthy of love? Do those qualities about you change just because the number on the scale changes?
Of course not, but many of us do believe that.
Sometimes you need to know, but not often
I would argue that there are very few times in our life when we actually need to know that number. Here is my list.
You need to know your weight when:
- You are going sky-diving and they need to make sure you have the right sized parachute. It’s physics, they actually need the number to compute how much air resistance you need to stop you from splatting on the earth.
- You want to Scuba Dive. They need to know how many weights to add to your belt so that you sink enough to view the beautiful fish, but not so much you will be stuck to the bottom of the ocean. Again physics needs actual numbers to plug into formulas to allow you to survive and enjoy your scuba diving experience.
- Your doctor needs to figure out the correct dosage of a medication to give you. Again your doctor needs to know your mass, so she can ensure the dosage of medication you get will be enough to treat you, but not so much that it kills you.
In fact in all of the above cases you don’t actually need to know your weight, your doctor or skydiving and scuba-diving partners do to choose the right equipment. You can still stay blissfully unaware.
In each of these three cases, you need to know your weight so that you don’t die. So to generalize:
You need to know your weight when some calculation must be done to ensure you don’t die. I don’t believe there is any other reason to know it.
Next time you step on the scale consider if you are improving the quality of your life when you do it. If you aren’t then throw it away.
If you aren’t ready to throw it away, then at least put it in a hard to get to spot. Then you aren’t looking at it each time you go to the bathroom!
