The Break Up

My scale and I have broken up, over the course of the past few months, about five or six times. We have a love-hate relationship for sure. When I first bought a digital scale I was fascinated by it, and would do crazy things like weigh myself and then weigh myself again five minutes later to see if it had changed. Or weigh myself before and after dinner to see the effects of eating. Really, this was a messed up habit. It was like inserting two AA batteries into a box of crack.

So I switched to weighing myself once a week and thus far that has worked for me. I ignore the scale for the rest of the week and we typically are okay with each other come Monday (or Tuesday, depending on how I’m feeling) morning. Except sometimes that evil whore likes to screw with my head. Really, I am completely aware that sometimes I just don’t lose weight that week, or sometimes I have my period and gain five pounds of water weight (no, really… well, sometimes it is part chocolate). But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be pissed off at the scale. It’s way easier than being pissed off at myself.

After the evil scale tells me a number I don’t like, we usually break up. It involves me putting the scale in the closet and deciding not to weigh myself for a few weeks. It’s just a number, right? It shouldn’t matter to me what the scale says?

The thing is that is DOES matter to me sometimes. And oh how I wish it didn’t. I’ve always struggled with poor body image and an unhealthy relationship with food, so I’m glad to be at a point now where I’m consistently losing weight because I’m adopting healthier habits. I eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly, and that’s what I’m supposed to do, yes? So I shouldn’t feel badly when the scale doesn’t go down, because a stupid number shouldn’t affect my mood that much. I tell myself this all the time. That doesn’t mean its easy to remember.

The weirder thing is that I feel like I shouldn’t be proud of losing 60 pounds. I’m proud that I can run seven miles and that I’m strong enough to do things for myself, but I don’t know how to deal with going from a size 20 to a size 12. (And that, my friends, is a bigger difference than I thought it would be.) Obviously, I am proud, but I sometimes feel that being proud of myself is somehow rejecting the person I was before and just another way of thinking more positively about myself because of my weight. I wish I could just be proud of myself for winning a Nobel Prize or something. But that involves winning a Nobel Prize and seems pretty difficult.

I would never want someone in my life to think badly about themselves because of the number the scale tells them. For some reason I’m afraid that by losing weight I will send the message that being overweight isn’t okay. At 220 pounds I was still the same person I am now, but when I look at pictures of myself from two years ago I can remember feeling so different about myself. I have had so many experiences where people judged me because of my weight or they pushed it into my head that I needed to be thin in order to be a worthwhile individual. Maybe by not taking care of myself, I was rebelling against that idea in a way. Overall I know that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be healthier, and I need to tell myself that. I don’t have to feel guilty about losing weight. I have a family with a history of obesity, heart problems and diabetes and that’s not where I want to find myself as I grow older. It’s not the number on the scale that I’m necessarily after—it’s a need to lead a healthy lifestyle.

And I seriously hope that my inner fat girl sticks around because people who grew up thin just do not get it. I don’t want to be one of those people. If I ever am, someone please punch me in the face.

Even more, I hope that I remember these things when the scale and I reconcile.