Breaking up with the scale
 

I need to completely let go of the scale and I'm writing a Dear John letter to symbolize. Is anyone with me??

I've managed to release myself from the bondage of calorie apps, taking my measurements, using the food scale, and exercise logs. But I haven't been able to get rid of the scale. I have begun to realize that there is nothing the scale can tell me that results to anything positive. If the number goes up I feel like a failure and it leads me to a binge. If the number goes down it makes me feel pressure to continue losing weight which also leads to a binge. Nothing comes from stepping on the scale but self torture and an imbalance of my mood.

So..... I have to let go of it. I'm so scared to do it! But it's undeniable that when I look back at my history the more I weighed myself the more I weighed. There are a number of years I did not use the scale and did not have an out of control weight problem. I have no idea what I weighed on my wedding day. I can see from pictures that I wasn't skinny, but I remember feeling beautiful and sexy and had no need of a scale to tell me so. So here's my Dear John Letter to my scale.

Dear Scale,
I want to thank you for being a trusted companion to me throughout these years. You wait for me patiently every Monday morning and have been truthful with me every time I step on you. I've grown to love and dread Monday mornings and so I must stop relying on you so much. Your side of the story has grown to be too black and white. You either tell me something good or something bad, and I know there is much more to the story than what you say. My Monday mornings now turn into panic rather than excitement no matter which way you tip. Like training wheels I feel I have outgrown the need to use you. It's time for me to start trusting myself and listening to what my body has to say instead. You may not have a final say in how I feel about myself. I do not need validation from you that I'm doing something right and I certainly do not need a scolding from you when I've done something wrong. There is no room for you in my life anymore. I will miss your constant companionship but I will try to visit you every couple of months for old time's sake. Please enjoy your new surroundings in the garage. I need space in my closet for my new shoes.

Yes, yes and YES!!! I wrote a whole post on it back in July. I actually destroyed my scale, though. lol

Wow, what an amazing post! I especially like what you say here "A bad weigh-in means I have to really lock down on my food choices and focus solely on that. A good weigh in means that while I’m in a great mood, I need to stay hyper vigilant to keep control and not blow it all."

I think that's the worst part of it for me too. There is nothing that the scale tells me that doesn't impact me in a negative way. It's almost easier when the scale goes up, because defeat and self hatred are commonplace in my life, I can do that. But a loss? Even a couple of pounds loss make me so scared! Scared that I'll gain it back, scared that it signals that I need to do more, to keep going, to get extra rigid. The pressure is too much.

Thanks for sharing!

Ugh, I have a confession. I stepped on a scale yesterday! I don't know how or why it happened. I took my kid to the doctor and we were waiting for the doctor to come in and my son was stepping on and off the scale. Suddenly I was standing on the scale.

It had been a week since I hid my scale and although it's been hard it's been doable. I had no intention of weighing myself when I stepped on that scale. The number.... well it was the same as last time I had stepped on it in my house and that led to all the thoughts I've been afraid of. "if the number is the same that must mean I lost weight because here I am standing with clothes and shoes and a belly full of breakfast! Which means this not weighing myself thing is working! Keep it up, eat less today, eat less today!"

I'm not angry with myself I'm more annoyed than anything to have met a scale so unexpectedly and witness how susceptible I am.

Haha was going to suggest the only solution was to detroy it like 'So much fattitude' then I read on and saw it was in the surgery, doh. Scales are everywhere...

Haha! Yep - I tried hiding mine awhile back. That didn't work. I tried having my husband hide it. Him hiding it only made us fight when he wouldn't tell me where it was, so that wasn't healthy. It's a true addiction. Much like an alcoholic probably doesn't keep a stocked bar in their house, I'm not tempting myself with a scale.

I will say, now that I'm back on Weight Watchers, it seems much easier without a scale at home. I weigh in once a week and that's it.

I hid it myself and I'm not tempted so far, I think it may just work out to keep it away rather than destroying it.

I'm not ready to formally break up with the scale yet, but as I recently realized the last few years of slowly gaining weight has meant the triggering of my BED (which perpetuates the weight gain further), I've reigned it in. I haven't weighed myself since Monday and I both do and do not want to know where I'm at. I know as soon as I weigh in I'm going to have to fight not to do it again an hour later, especially if the number isn't what I want to see. For now I want to focus on my feelings and my hunger and let my body do what it will.

There's an intuitive eating thread you may like to join, your posts make me think that you are an IEer.

Thanks, Wannabeskinny. I will look into it. I've always been such an avid calorie counter it's strange to think of myself as an intuitive eater now!

Very brave of you, WBS. I hope to take a similar plunge one day. Let us know how it goes.

F.

So far so good I feel much calmer when I have prolonged periods of time that I'm not weighing. It's very interesting that it makes me much more attuned with other ways of feeling a difference. It sharpens all my other senses. The past couple of weeks I've weighed myself 3 times and that's a lot, it's also indicative that I have a lot on my mind and feeling frustrated about things going on in my life, therefore I cling to old habits like weighing myself. Some I my dieting behaviors that arise grow strictly out of anxiety and stress as if I'm straining for control.

Even if you can't do it for very long, it's an interesting experiment to keep the sale away for a while. It teaches you things about yourself you wouldn't know unless you did it.

Nice! Right before I left Europe I threw out mine and haven't really weighed myself since last summer. I thought about it sometimes but I want to see if its possible to maintain my lifestyle and size without the motivation of a scale reading. Just took pics, the blue shirt was me last summer and the dark shirt is me today. I'm far from being consistent, but I am learning that its possible to be able to be where I want to be as long as I try even without a scale.

http://i.imgur.com/A25Vawj.jpg

Good for you pixellate!!

To preface this: I like your choice to ditch the scale, since it sounds like it might help you continue on your healthy path in a really holistic way that's true to yourself. I'm repeatedly impressed by your ability to make choices that work well for you, and I truly think you are an inspiration to people who want to improve their relationship with food.

But I find this whole thread odd... it seems at odds with you, from my perspective. True, I don't really know you; I've only had peeks in from the outside via forum posts... but this thread surprised me.

Your weight is an aspect of your body that there's no inherent harm in knowing. Clearly it causes you some harm, but so did food at one point, because it was misused. So just like you've improved your relationship with food, I would have expected you would prefer to improve your relationship with your scale rather than toss it by the wayside.

In conjunction with other things, your scale can give indicators about your health and well-being. It can help reinforce and explain your internal feelings so you can make decisions about your health. It can be your friend if you are able to use the number in a different way - not as a way to deride or motivate yourself.

Anyway, like I was saying: Do what works for you, because your track record is pretty great and you know what's best for you. I just wanted to express my surprise.

Interesting that it surprises you. It's common advice among those in the Intuitive Eating community to ditch the scale so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

There are plenty of ways for me to understand what is happening with my body. I can gauge by how I feel, how my clothes fit, how my energy levels are, how much pain I don't have in my joints, how well I fit into a seat, I can measure myself and try on clothes. I'm not limited by not knowing what I weigh every moment of every day. I'm not at the point where I don't care at all, but I've managed to cut down from daily weigh ins to only weighing myself every 4-6 weeks. I'm not really missing out on any important information by cutting down on my weigh ins.

I'm not knocking it, I'm not one of THOSE people lol. If you feel empowered by weighing yourself frequently then that's great. But it doesn't work for me, when I find myself weighing more frequently it's usually a sign that I've got some inner turmoil in my life and I'm just grasping at some semblance of control. I don't wish to control my weight loss in any way, my ultimate goal is not weight loss. My goal is to be comfortable in my own skin, trust that my body knows what it needs, eat the foods that make me feel good, and not be controlled by an eating disorder. Weight loss is a very pleasant side effect of those accomplishments.

And my real track record is that the less I weigh myself the more effortlessly the pounds come off. The more I weigh myself the more weight I gain. What should I do? It's a no brainer.

I think that what she means is that she assumed that you would have reached a comfortable point with the scale where you weighing yourself or not weighing yourself does not affect how effortless (or effortful?) your weightloss is or how comfortable you feel. Maybe a challenge could be weighing yourself a ton and trying not to feel stress about it.

I think I'm just not very knowledgeable about the Intuitive Eating community...

I think when I try and understand the reasons for intuitive eating, I say to myself "well if I were to go that route, it would be because I don't want anything - food, drugs, a scale - to have control over me" but that may not be the same for everyone. It sounds like it's not the same for MOST, actually. So I guess that goes to show I just haven't looked into it enough. But you did post outside the Intuitive Eating boards, so I thought you were opening up the subject to a wider audience purposefully (I'd probably have tried to learn more first if it was in the IE boards).

For myself, I think it's interesting how my weight changes from day to day, and I can see, for example, that I've "gained five pounds" in a day and attribute that to salt intake, which in turn explains why I've been feeling weird the last day or two. I might not attribute that to salt without the added information from the scale. Now, with intuitive eating I'm sure you're more in tune with your body's signals than I am with mine. But that doesn't mean the information is entirely useless.

I don't find it disheartening or motivating to step on a scale, so my thoughts on scales wouldn't be relevant for you. I guess the place I was coming from was from thinking you're trying to be at peace with everything in the world around you (scales inclusive), not just at peace within yourself.

Peace within yourself (or comfortable in your own skin and trusting in your body, as you put it) is a perfectly noble goal. Nothing wrong with that.

I'm not there yet. Hopefully when I've reached easy comfort with IE I won't feel like it's necessary to weigh myself at all. Or maybe the number on the scale won't trigger me back into dieting, because that's what it does to me now. I don't see why I should weigh myself more, it's not like I don't know what I weigh. I don't need to witness water weight, I've done the scale thing for so many years and I need some freedom for it.

It might be different for you faiora, maybe you're new to the dieting game but I've played it for a long time and it's had its way with my psyche. There was a time when it served its purpose and now I need space from it, I just feel better and eat better and look better when I'm not constantly weighing myself.

I don't want it to have a hold over me, but I don't want it to be of any significance in my life either.

In all fairness there are no IE boards, we only have a monthly thread in the General diet section. But this particular issue is not exclusive to IE nor do I mean it to be. Many people struggle with the scale and can relate to the post.

It's not a crime to not know anything about IE. A year ago I didn't know anything about it either. And I did not come to it because I didn't want anything to have control over me like food or drugs, quite the opposite in that I don't believe any substance including food has any control over me. The reason I turned to IE is the same for everyone who turns to IE. They're sick and tired of diets, of counting calories and points, of weighing themselves and scrutinizing every morsel of food that they eat. I realized that the more I was dieting the more I was gaining weight and I was sick of it. IE is about learning to trust yourself, rebuilding your relationship with yourself and with food, and above all else learning to enjoy your life.

People who weigh themselves daily lose more weight.

If you see your weight going up, you can alter your diet. It's a wakeup call. If you see you have gained five pounds, you can make a plan to lose those pounds.

Weight gain is a gradual process. You might not realize that you are gaining.

Weigh yourself every morning since this is more accurate than once a week. Respond accordingly. If your weight goes up, maybe you need to really watch your diet and walk another mile to compensate. Without this hard data, you won't know what to do.

Maybe that would be the optimal route but given Wannabeskinny's relationship with the scale which she has detailed in this thread, I think the route she has chosen is the best for her mental well-being at the moment. Weight loss is not purely physical or logical for many of us, as much as that would be ideal.

Also, I prefer to weigh myself once a week. Less pressure and it's accurate in the long run anyway. :)

With all due respect, I think this might be more true for the featherweights among us. I can shift up/down five pounds in a matter of hours (just did overnight actually) just from water weight changes! (see signature graph) ...I haven't been eating fewer calories since my last weight peak - just less salt. Salty food can throw my numbers upwards for a few days.

I don't disagree with daily weighing, and it's certainly true that daily data is more useful than weekly data... but I don't think adjusting food on a daily basis based on weight is a good thing. I think that needs to be evaluated at most once per month, because you can't get a really good trend line sooner than that.

Anyway, we're kind of off-topic in the thread because Wannabeskinny does Intuitive Eating... which I've gathered means she's not eating based on what the scale says, but rather based on what her body says. :)

I recently wrote a post in my blog that sort of looks at the psychology behind losing vs. gaining weight and why (for many) gaining weight seems so much easier.

For me, I am weighing daily (and seeing fluctuations daily since I am so heavy and can retain a lot of water at any given time), but my perspective has totally changed. If I gain weight one day my mentality is "okay, whatever, at least I know" and if I lose weight then it's "okay, whatever, at least I know". In other words, I see the scale as merely a useful tool that doesn't hold any power over me one way or the other. I only record the weight once per week.

It does however take a lot of inner strength to reach this point where you can completely detach yourself emotionally from the process and for many, many years I really struggled (and failed, time and time again) with this. IMO Emotions + Micromanagement = Recipe for frustration and failure.

If no scale helps you detach yourself from the process then more power to you! Over time, that might change but you ultimately know yourself best.

I like what you say about Emotions + micromanagement equally a recipe for failure, that's so very true and has been my personal downfall every step of the way. All the tools I've used to manage my weight were meant to be empowering but in the end I was running around in circles worrying over the failure of each one of them and I got more and more frustrated.

I don't know about inner strength having anything to do with it though. Honestly I am not a weak willed person and I don't suffer from lack of strength in any way. Dependence on these "tools" is what makes me feel weak ultimately.

Bottom line, everyone takes a different road to get where they are going. I've dropped the calorie counting, the food scale, I've stopped tracking my weight, tracking my exercise, wearing a fitbit, or making charts. I stopped all this over 6 months ago and I've been looking better, feeling better and losing weight ever since. You can't pay me to go back to making myself nuts over those things.

To me it's clear that you're coming from a place of strength. I admire your ability to trust your own body/mind and detach yourself from a powerful (and often noxious) cultural script. Bravo.

F.