Ending your relationship with your scale can take hard work. For some of us (like me!) we might have (or had) an addiction to weighing ourselves.
I’m happy to say that I haven’t weighed myself in 9 months and it’s been the best 9 months I’ve ever had with myself in terms of body image.
I will be honest; I weighed myself pretty often after I had Rachel to see how much weight I had lost. For some reason I became obsessed again with watching that number get lower and lower, boosting my confidence each time.
But eventually, that number plateaued and I stopped getting that hit of dopamine every time I stepped on the scale. I started to feel frustrated with myself and my body again. I started to feel sad, unhappy and worried that I would have to go back to my old restrictive eating habits and over-exercising to lose more weight and to feel “good” about myself again.
Even though I told myself over and over that the number didn’t matter, I still ended up letting it dictate my self-worth and my mood that day.
But then the best thing ever happened: my scale ran out of batteries!
And I decided not to replace them. I recognized that the number on the scale was dictating too much of my mood.It even started to jeopardize all of the hard work I had already done to heal my relationship with my body.
Since I stopped hopping on the scale, I started to like my body again and started appreciating it for all the amazing things it does for me. I learned that while you’re breastfeeding, you actually need to have extra weight/fat on your body to make milk. I just had to learn (again) to trust my body and let it do its thing.
I feel better than ever in my body now and I have no idea how much I weigh and no desire to find out.
Here’s a few steps to help you ditch the scale for good and take back your life:
1. Hide it, throw it out, break it, just get rid of it
The easiest way to stop weighing yourself is to physically get rid of your scale and never turn back. Your weight is just a number and should not dictate how happy you are each day.
2. Don’t be tempted to weigh yourself at the gym, someone’s house, at the doctor’s etc.
Again, the number is not going to tell you how good of a person you are so just don’t do it.
3. Is knowing your weight serving you?
Is it? Is that number going to make you feel better or worse? Is knowing how much you weigh going to make you a better, happier more present person? I bet it’s not.
4. Ask yourself WHY you’re weighing yourself
Before you jump on that scale, ask yourself what the number means to you? Is that number important because you believe that the less (or more) you weigh, the more control you will have? or the more successful will be? or the more opportunities will come your way? or the more worthy you will be of love, money, friendship, etc.? Well I can tell you from experience that your weight has ZERO bearing on any of these things and focusing on weight loss/gains only makes you less present and less likely to achieve any of them.
5. Don’t gamble with your happiness
If you are equating happiness with the number on the scale then you are essentially basing your happiness on the stock market – it will go up and it will go down and you don’t actually have control over it, no matter how much you believe you do. Allowing external cues to influence your well-being will only lead to you to feeling emotionally unstable.
To summarize, your weight is just a number and regardless of that number it doesn’t make you any more or less of a person.
The best way to heal your relationship with your body and yourself is to break up with your scale; take away its power and never look back.
Enjoy your new life free of the shackles of the scale.
xoxo
