Let’s start off right out the gate by establishing that I have an unhealthy relationship with the scale. For most of my formative years, weight was never really an issue. The scale wasn’t the evil spawn of satan. It was a toy that we played with as kids.
The numbers on the scale didn’t really start to matter until I got to high school. Freshman year I was constantly taunted because I was less than 100 pounds. Now I know many of you are thinking, “Is this a joke? She’s upset because she weighed less than 100 pounds?” Yes! Weighing too little is a problem and can create many health issues just like being overweight can.
While my BMI was on the low end, it wasn’t considered underweight for my height. But the pokes and comments about my thinness drove me to eat more. For a 14-year-old girl, I could put away as much food as my full-grown father and then some. When Sophomore year came and I reached my goal of weighing over 100 pounds, I was elated!
Over the remaining years of high school, as I continued to eat a small bear at almost every meal, I established some very poor eat habits. I was/am lucky to be blessed with a high metabolism because I should have been the size of a bus given my daily caloric intake. I worked out 5 to 6 days a week and I weighed myself every single day. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was obsessed with the scale. Each year, I had a self imposed goal weight to reach and maintain. By the end of high school, I was happily at 115 pounds and the praise I got for my weight was positive. Keep in mind that this was in 2005 when ultra-thin was cool.
Then I got to college. There was a scale, but this time it was controlled by my coach. I was month into school and my coach asked every team member to step on the scale. We all lined up and he started recording our weights aloud in front of the entire team. I didn’t feel anxious about weighing in because I knew at 115 pounds with a height of 5’5″ that I was at a perfect performance ability.
I stepped on the scale and saw the scale start to work and then, as predicted, 115 flashed on the screen. My coach announced my weight and then immediately said, “You need to lose 5 pounds. Come see me for your meal plan at the end of practice and you will be weight at the beginning of every practice going forth.” I was stunned. Lose 5 pounds!? What was he thinking?
I received my meal plan at the end of practice and reviewed it in my room later in the evening. I am not even joking when it totaled less than 1000 calories a day. I was shocked and confused. I had spent years eating {poorly mind you} to gain weight and now I was being told to lose it and cut my caloric intake by 70%!
Over the next few weeks, my meals were monitored by my coach. He would remove things from my plate that he felt didn’t go with my meal plan. I was weighed daily and I started to get extremely anxious before every practice because of that scale. My weight never changed but I was hungry. Very, very hungry.
After a few months {yes months!}, I was home on break and I was looking at pictures of my senior year and something clicked. I weighed the same as what I weighed in the pictures and I looked thin, like a bag of bones thin, and I was starving. I had had enough. Upon returning to school, I promptly told my coach to take his scale and meal plan and go away. He was livid and I didn’t care because I was no longer hungry or anxious about a scale.
Since late 2005, I have not stepped foot on a scale, minus at doctor’s appointments which I still have anxiety about when I see the numbers. It has been a game-changer!
I’ve learned that it’s not about the numbers on the scale. It’s about how you feel.
You can weigh 120 pounds, eat garbage food everyday, feel like complete poo poo and you are unhealthy. Or you can take care of your body, exercise, eat well, feel great and be healthy! Being healthy takes a lot of hard work and dedication to yourself. You don’t need that judgy thing on the floor saying you weigh too much when you are working to be your best self.
Tell that scale to take all its evil little judging numbers and buzz off.
