Quote:
Originally Posted by Wannabeskinny
In my own experience it is the diet mentality for me. Being tied to a scale several times a day makes me nervous even thinking about it. Nothing good has ever come from stepping on a scale often for me. I do it when I have to and leave it at that. If the number is good I feel pressure to "keep it up" if the number is bad I feel shame. If the number is different than what I thought it would be it could send me into a binge.
That used to be true for me too, but mostly because I was taught and told to think that way by almost every women's magazine and weight loss club. It gradually dawned on me that the scale didn't make me feel that way, I chose to have those feelings and chose to tie them to the scale.
Weighing once or twice a day no more ties me to a scale than brushing my teeth 2-3 times a day ties me to a toothbrush.
I did have to completely ditch the shame and expectations though and stop thinking of the scale's number as bad or good. It's a number, neither good or bad. Gaining does not make me a bad person any more than having messy hair or spinach in my teeth. Losing doesn't make me a better person, either. It doesn't even make me a healthier person, because if I do it by unhealthy eatng, my health can plummet along with my weight.
If I didn't have health and mobility issues, I wouldn't bother with the scale at all, because weight loss wouldn't be a priority for me at all. My husband thought I was beautiful and I felt beautiful at nearly 400 lbs.
Now I have health issues that tend to improve with weight loss, but I'm a person who tends to live (and eat) on impulse. Weighing once or even more often per day, reminds me that my first weight goal is "not gaining," and my secondary goal is weight loss.
Even gaining isn't a tragedy. If I woke up tomorrow and found that I'd gained 25 lbs, there'd be no shame in it for me, because I have divorced my self esteem from my weight. I'm a not and never will be a number on the scale or a number on my clothing tags.
There are a lot of things I put more thought into than my weight loss (which is why I'm losing so slowly, and every once in a while backtrack). I don't mind losing slowly, or even gaining occasionally, because it just means something more important to me came up.
I spend 4 minutes a day brushing my teeth. I spend 5-30 seconds a day on the scale, and I don't think of my weight at all, except for the few seconds it takes me to get on the scale and read/ record my weight.
Shame is a choice, it doesn't always feel like a choice, but it is, and I choose to reject shame. My weight is such an unimportant part of me, I feel no reason to tie shame to it. I like who I am, with or without weight loss. I'm only working at weight loss to get a longer, more comfortable and more capable life. If I weighed myself every 30 minutes it wouldn't change how I feel about myself (and even then those 30 or so weigh-ins would still take up less time in my day than brushing my teeth).