The Power of the Scale

Over the years my fitness journey has been an all or nothing. I was either all in and restricting food way more than I am ever comfortable with or eating an entire bag of chips in one sitting. There was no middle for me. I have always heard different fitness/health professionals say “everything in moderation.”  Well this chick did not really understand moderation. In my head it made sense, but I didn’t know how or what that looked like. Was moderation an entire bag of chips today and nothing the rest of the week, or was it some today and some tomorrow, and some the next day?

Last year this time I was working the Weight Watchers point system. I had done WW before and it was familiar to me. WW was comfortable like an old pair of jeans that you knew always fit. But, I dreaded the weigh in. I hated the feeling of walking in to WW knowing that I gained weight that week, but I had felt like I had done all the right things. Or I had weeks where I thought that if I didn’t log food into my tracker that it wouldn’t matter. Well, think about that for a second. Does my ass really not log the calories eaten because I didn’t put it in my tracker? 

I played all sorts of mental games with myself over the number on the scale. I often told myself that once I get to goal weight I can go back to life as normal. That’s not really how sustained weight loss works, but I couldn’t wrap my head around what a healthy lifestyle was. I stopped going to WW in February 2019. My husband was coming home from Antarctica and I just wanted to keep off the 35-40 pounds that I lost without having to count calories or weigh in weekly. 

In April we joined Orange Theory Fitness, mostly as a way to get our son ready for boot camp. Since the cost for 2 of us to do OTF was about the same as what we were paying for his personal trainer we decided to give it a go. The first few weeks I just kept thinking when he leaves for boot camp I can quit OTF. I mean I want to be a healthy weight and have better eating habits, I was not interested in being one of those fitness people who posted about their workouts. Go ahead and laugh now, it’s ok. 

It was during one of the transformation challenges at OTF that I really tuned in to how much of my self worth was determined by the number that showed up on the scale. I mean the scale can’t lie, can it? You step on and it faithfully displays a number. So how could that number be wrong?

The scale, just like anything else, can be a fucking liar.  The scale does not have the ability to recognize that you walked away from that piece of cake, or didn’t binge and Instead leaned in to your emotions, or that you went to the gym, or for a run, or walked around your house, or chased your kids at the park, or that instead of that burger that looked so good you chose chicken or a salad. The scale doesn’t have the ability to recognize or register any of that data. The number the scale shows needs to be treated as number. No more, no less. 

On my journey to becoming the healthiest version of myself I need to remember to use the data from all sources as just that, data. I hope you will join me in releasing the power the scale has. Let’s remember to use the data as fuel to be better instead of fuel for the shaming that comes with whatever number shows up on the scale.