Weight Tracker: Why I Ditched the Scale For Good (and You Can, Too!)
I was first introduced to the scale in elementary school. It was an old fashioned manual scale that stood tall in our hallway. I never thought much of it until I realized what it measured about myself.
I remember stepping on it for the first time and figuring out how to jerryrig the pieces to get it to tell me how much I weighed. While I don’t recall the specific number, I do remember thinking that I needed to make that number shrink. Thus, beginning my destructive relationship and downward spiral with the scale.
High school was the first time I actively began dieting. With prom just a couple months away, I decided it was time to slim down to fit into my dress. I bought slim fast and detox teas from the supermarket and was ready to jump on the dieting bandwagon in the name of “health” and thinness. The measure of my success? The scale, of course!
At that point, I upgraded to a digital scale that could easily be hidden under the confines of my bed. Every morning, before showering, eating or drinking anything, I whipped it out and waited for the flashing numbers to show me the progress I made (or didn’t make).
It became a competition with myself, a ritual determining the course of my day.
You see, if I stepped on the scale and didn’t see that the number had dropped, I punished myself by eating less that day or exercising more. Even when I did see the number go down, it was never enough. Seeing a lower weight on the scale only pushed me to further rigidity with eating and exercise.
When my parents started to become aware of what I was dealing with, they moved quickly to get rid of any scales in the house. But it didn’t matter. I started driving to the gym just to weigh myself in the women’s locker room first thing in the morning. I had to have a way of knowing what I would be allowed to eat (or not eat) during the course of my day. It became a vicious cycle that quickly escalated into a full blown eating disorder, lasting from my late teens and into my early twenties.
Recovering from my eating disorder was a grueling battle, which required the unlearning of so many things I thought to be true of myself and my worth. While eating disorders are the culmination of many complex factors working together to create the perfect storm, I see the subtle role the scale had in how I began to measure my worth and value.
A major turning point in my healing journey with food and my body began with eliminating my scale. At first, the thought of not having it was terrifying. It had become so ingrained into my routine and food rules that I couldn’t even imagine functioning without it.
But once it was gone, I began to realize just how much of my precious mental space it had taken up.
When I started focusing on feeding my body, regardless of what I weighed or without a scale to dictate my day, I understood just how much power I’d allowed it to have over my life. Without weighing myself daily, I was so much more free to actually listen to what my body needed without allowing an arbitrary number dictate my health or my worth.
Ditching Diet Culture One Scale at a Time
I’m thankful to have enjoyed freedom with food and peace in my body for over a decade now, but it wasn’t always like this.
Now, more than ever, diet culture is rampant and is going after our kids at younger and younger ages. Through my own healing journey, I’ve had a renewed passion to support mothers in also finding freedom with food and their bodies to live life to the fullest and not lose precious moments to diet culture. While challenging the magnitude of diet culture is overwhelming in itself, it comes down to the small steps - the things you can do TODAY to reshape the way you feel about food and your body.
For me, that small step was doing away with my scale for good.
For too long, I let it dictate how I felt about my body or the way I should feed myself during the course of the day. It was a vicious battle I was never going to win, because no matter what the number on the scale said, it was never good enough.
I gave it up because I wanted to stop obsessing over my weight and body size. I wanted to enjoy food freely without needing permission from the scale to eat. I didn’t want to feel like I had to punish my body unnecessarily because of the numbers reflected back at me. I didn’t want to be a slave to a number anymore. And honestly, I didn’t realize how much of my life it had taken over until I let it go and stopped weighing myself everyday.
It’s crazy that something so small and insignificant can take up so much space and brain power. But the best realization is understanding how you can take that power back, simply by not allowing it to be part of your life anymore.
Getting rid of my scale was one of the best decisions I made for my food and body healing journey.
Now, as a mom of 5 kids, I can’t imagine living with a scale in our home. When we decided to grow our family, I knew I didn’t want to drag my kids through my own food and body image issues. I didn’t want the negative behaviors I lived with for so long to recycle to them. And it started with a small but powerful step forward, a commitment to letting go of the things that kept me in bondage for so long.
While getting rid of my scale didn’t magically heal my relationship with food and my body overnight, it was a starting point that shifted the tide in a new direction.
It changed the narrative in my brain that my weight was no longer defining my worth, nor could it dictate how or what I would feed my body. It allowed me to turn down some of that deafening external noise so I could actually pay attention to what my body was needing and come home to myself. It created the momentum I needed to move forward toward healing and trust in my body once more.
To this day, we don’t own a scale or have one in our home. I think the last time I was weighed was when I was pregnant, and even in pregnancy, I committed to doing blind weights at the doctor’s office, so as not to become preoccupied with the pregnancy weight tracker.
(By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about how I navigated pregnancy in eating disorder recovery, be sure to check out this post here: “How to Survive Pregnancy After Eating Disorder Recovery”. It is possible to break free from the pregnancy weight gain tracker so you can focus on doing what’s most important to keep you and your baby healthy and safe during pregnancy. And FYI - You CAN opt-out of being weighed during pregnancy without jeopardizing your health and safety. There are many other markers your providers can use to assess your health outside of being weighed.)
It has been so liberating to reclaim life from the scale and to learn to live in alignment with my body and values, not fighting against them.
Ultimately, I’m hopeful that as my children grow up, they will be empowered to trust their bodies in the same way. I know they’ll inevitably encounter diet culture in various ways and places, but I’m hopeful the alliance they’ve built with their bodies will keep them impermeable to the lure and ploys of diet culture.
Reclaiming Your Life From the Scale
If you too want to reclaim your life from diet culture and heal your relationship with food and your body, I want to encourage you to consider the role your scale plays in your life.
Do you find yourself needing to step on it frequently?
Do you need it as reassurance or guidance?
Does it dictate the course of your day, including how you feel about your body and what you decide to eat?
Let me tell you something: it doesn’t have to control you ANYMORE. It doesn’t have to take up any more of your precious mental space or energy.
As a recovered scale-addict, I can tell you with complete assurance that giving up your scale will be the best thing you ever did for yourself. Will it feel strange at first? YES. Is it possible to live without it? Also yes.
Not just live but THRIVE and take a powerful step forward in reclaiming your life from diet culture. It starts with awareness - understanding the role your scale may be playing in your life and the power it may have over you. Then, it’s a matter of acknowledging enough is ENOUGH and deciding how you want to get rid of your scale.
Do you want to throw it out with the trash? Smash it to smithereens with a sledgehammer? (That can actually be super therapeutic). Remove it from your home and your life, and give yourself full permission to start living, eating, and BEING without it.
Trust me on this one, you will not regret your decision.
And when you’re toying with the idea but not sure if you’re ready to let it go, keep your WHYs in mind as your motivation.
Here are just a few reasons why you would benefit from getting rid of your scale:
More mental space to focus on the things that really matter in your life
More clarity around how to listen to your body
The capacity to enjoy freedom with food
Increased ability to treat yourself with the respect and kindness you deserve
The ability to model body respect and kindness to your children
Stopping diet culture form entering into another generation
There’s no better time than NOW to take this brave step forward to making peace with food and your body and reclaiming your life from diet culture. It starts by creating the change you want to see for your own children. You don’t have to wait until you’ve reached a certain weight or clothing size to break up with your scale. You can do it today and start enjoying the freedom that comes with separating yourself and your worth from a number.
Don’t I Need Weight Control to be Healthy?
One of the common pushbacks I get from this idea of surrendering the scale has to do with weight control for the sake of being healthy. Is it necessary to monitor your weight in order to be healthy?
While there are many differing opinions about this, I would argue that ongoing weight monitoring is not necessary to maintain health; at least, not health in the sense that encompasses all aspects of your well-being, including physical, emotional, and mental health. Because truly, the number on the scale doesn’t reflect anything about you as a person, including the status of your overall health.
Watering down health to weight alone is a diet culture tactic that keeps people trapped in a narrow view of what really matters. But look at it like this: if weighing yourself and stressing over your weight is creating more stress and anxiety for you, is that helping your health? In reality, the stress you might feel around your weight is far worse for your physical and mental health.
So when you think about needing to weigh yourself for health reasons, be sure to keep the big picture in mind. What do you feel like you’re achieving by monitoring your weight? Is it bringing added stress into your life? Are you compromising your mental health in pursuit of your physical health? Remember - there is no health without mental health.
For more ideas on how to support your overall health as a family without dieting or rigidity around food or the scale, be sure to check out this post here: “Family Health: 9 Simple Tips to Help You and Your Loved Ones Thrive”
You no longer need to measure your worth or health by a number on the scale. And by living this out, you will teach your children to do the same.
Are you a mom who needs more support around food and/or body image issues? Or are you a mother in recovery from an eating disorder? Consider joining our free virtual support group, LIft the Shame. Find more information and join here: “Lift the Shame Online Support Group”
Now I'd love to hear from you! Have you banned the scale from your home yet? If so, what has that experience been like for you? Feel free to share in the comments below.