It’s been awhile since my last installment of the intuitive eating series. If you’d like to read more before we begin (or enjoy more on the topic after reading), here is what has been discussed previously:
- Post 1: Brief introduction to intuitive eating and the reaction I received from FitBloggin2011
- Post 2: My personal intuitive eating experience
- Post 3: The role self acceptance plays into my intuitive eating journey
- Post 4: Intuitive eating challenges and does it “work”
- Post 5: Thoughts on why our natural born intuitive eating skills diminish
There are many view points as to whether or not you should weigh yourself. I think using a scale is such a personal decision because it depends on your relationship with the scale. Did you know we all have a relationship with the scale? I’m sure a lot of you know what I’m talking about.
For some, the scale is an instrumental that states a fact: your weight.
For others, the number that appears on the scale stirs up personal emotions that can affect the way you perceive yourself. Let me explain.
I used to have a horrid relationship with the scale. The number I saw on the scale affected my whole mood for the day. It affected how much I would eat after seeing that number. If affected if I would take a laxative pill that night. The number would make me strip off all my clothes and reweigh myself, hoping for a lower number. The number consumed me.
Over the years, as I learned about nutrition properly and learned to love myself better, my relationship with the scale got better too. Sure, there were times when I didn’t (and don’t) weigh myself at all, but I’m at a point in my life right now (and have been for some time) that I see the number on the scale as a fact. The number doesn’t tell me anything about my self worth and the number doesn’t make me any more or less of a person.
There are times in my life that, to me, the scale helped me in a positive way. First, when I train for half marathons I do a pre and post weight on long run days. This helps me ensure that I hydrate properly throughout the rest of the day. Second, when I was pregnant it was neat to follow along with my weight gain. Once again, these are ways that the scale was positive for me, but could be triggering to others. The way I looked at it was this: the number doesn’t matter, but it was a beneficial piece of information in keeping me healthy (hydration purposes while training and proper growth of my baby while pregnant). The number didn’t tell me how awesome I was for training or how amazing it is to carry a human being inside of me — I tell myself those things.
Of course there are other ways to monitor a healthy lifestyle. Non-scale victories are so amazing and can often mean more than just knowing your weight. In terms of going to the doctor, why not look at other numbers? Cholesterol, trigylcerides, blood sugar, etc, are all numbers that can tell you a better story than just simply knowing your weight. How about in terms of fitness? A low weight doesn’t necessarily mean you are fit. Have you accomplished a running milestone or added more weight to your barbell? Those numbers can tell a better story too.
Everyone’s relationship with the scale is a different one. If you think you may have an unhealthy relationship with it, try ditching the scale and see how you feel! If you think you need help working on that relationship I want you to know there are people out there to help you — the combination of seeing a registered dietitian and a psychologist is a very effective option for combatting disordered thoughts that could be on the verge of spiraling out of control. If you don’t know where to look, please feel free to email me and I will point you in the right direction. All information would of course be kept confidential.
If you’d like to share, please write about your relationship with the scale in the comments below.
Wonderful insight! Thanks for being so open and honest. It can be a really tough subject. I definitely weighed myself too much and was consumed by the number for awhile in college. Now since I have realized I need to put some healthy weight back on I weigh myself once a week and don’t think about of again. It’s now a tool for monitoring my health to get myself where I am supposed to be and nothing more which feels so good! Spa love!
I never use the scale to track progress anymore. I actually gave it up one year for the whole year. The problem with the scale is you can keep losing and losing weight, but if that is a rapid weight loss, it’s also muscle loss. I want to preserve muscle. And in doing so, the scale is never going to be truly reflective. But this is just me, and for my goals!
When I was younger I had a love/hate relationship with my scale. I would weigh myself a few times a week, and like you said, if the number was higher than I wanted to see, I would not eat as much as I should and it would put me in a crappy mood for the rest of the day. These days, I rarely step on the scale. I know how I’m doing based on how my clothes fit and how I feel overall. There’s no need to judge yourself based on a number!
Good post Katie! I try to use the scale as a positive tool, but know it’s not the only tool. It was a great tool when I realized that I weighed 200 pounds and provided a much needed wake up call. I now use it to monitor my habits and stay on track to staying healthy.
my relationship with the scale was definitely a bad one. i let the number it displayed to me tell me whether i’d been “good” or “bad” lately. i thought in black and white terms – that if a number wasn’t going down, i wasn’t working hard enough. i never considered that a steady number could still mean i was gaining muscle and losing fat as i started my fitness journey. the scale definitely played a big part in my development of an ED.
even when i entered recovery i used the scale, but more so to reassure myself that eating something on my “bad list” the day before hadn’t made me gain a bunch of weight overnight. or, i’d use it to check how much i weighed to determine whether or not my doctor’s appointment to check my progress would be a good one (i had made strides) or a bad one (i’d lost weight).
when i moved home from college last may, i threw out my scale. i didn’t move it from my dorm to my home bathroom, i just got rid of it. i haven’t weighed myself since then and i haven’t looked at a scale at the doctor’s office since july or august – of last year. my life is better without the scale. living scale-less isn’t for everyone perhaps but right now, it works for me.
I LOVE this post, I love your honesty about how it has been hard for you to embrace the scale in the past but in learning how to use it positively. For me, unfortunately, it is more of a fixation than it’s worth, so for the time being, I really don’t weigh myself. I just go by how my clothes fit and inches lost by measuring tape, and that satisfies me most. I would like to have a ‘friendship’ with the scale. Maybe in time
XO!
I love this series, can’t say that enough.
As for the scale — I used to be exactly the same as you used to be. It would set me OFF. I would suddenly hate myself all because of a stupid number. But now, like you said, it’s become a fact but not the be all end all measuring stick by which I gauge how I’m doing health/fitness wise. There is SO much that goes into a healthy lifestyle and weight is just ONE factor among many. It’s how you feel. It’s how your clothes fit. It’s how happy you are overall. How fit you feel, etc. The scale is just a tool to keep things in check from time-to-time but nothing worth obsessing over. Ever.
To be honest, my relationship with the scale is not all that healthy. While it doesn’t affect my mood or change the way I eat, I have been known to run in to urinate then try again or plan my clithing for a doctor’s visit based on its weight. Silly, but there it is. I don’t have an ED an think my scale relationship is in the normal range. That being said, I rarely weigh myself. Sometimes months go by between weigh ins.
Great topic. I love reading the comments because like you said, everybody is different when it comes to weighing themselves.
I think the scale can be very useful as long as it can be used just as a measure to gauge progress and along with other measures since it’s not always the most reliable. I don’t personally use it now because I find it doesn’t tell me much of anything I wouldn’t already know since I’m maintaining. When losing baby weight I did use it for awhile as a tool to see that I’m on track.