The Bathroom Scale.....My Fair-Weather Friend

Every morning before I get out of bed, I complete a pre weigh-in body check. I assess if I’m holding excess water by clasping my hands together, I evaluate the altitude of my abdomen and I squeeze the fat on my outer thighs to see if any of it has melted away overnight.

This ritual is usually an accurate predictor of what the scale will say. But since I have been participating in the Healthy Challenge, my morning body assessment and the scale do not always report the same findings. This morning I woke up feeling great. I had a great workout last night, stayed 100% on my Medifast plan yesterday and definitely had less fat to evaluate. I was certain that I had lost a couple of pounds.

When I stepped on the scale, I had not lost an ounce! NOT ONE OUNCE. I was so disappointed I wanted to go to McDonalds and eat two Sausage McMuffins. I FELT thinner, and dang it I LOOKED thinner! People tell you that muscle weighs more than fat and your body’s water composition fluctuates and so on, but that is no comfort when I have allowed the numbers on the scale to dictate my daily mood for the past 30 years. To add to the scale-induced psychoses, I am weighed once a week in front of my teammates and the weight of the week is then printed in the paper. So, does the number on the scale have an unhealthy effect on my quality of life?

Yes it does, but starting today I am changing that. When my scale “cooperates” with me, I feel energetic, motivated and ready to conquer the world. When my scale does not properly reward me for all of my hard work, I want to get back into bed and plan a binge. This is going to stop. I will no longer defend every ounce of water weight to myself, my team or to all of Prince George’s County. I am thinner, evidenced by a reduction in dress size, and I am stronger and have more energy. This competition is measuring my success in pounds, but I will institute new measurements to preserve some of my sanity along with muscle mass.

I want my team to win, but after the competition is over, I want to have won new peace of mind and a new reliance on health in place of the scale. Having my weight printed in the paper took away some of the power of the actual numbers, but my private dependence on the scale still crippled me.

So, I should just throw the scale away! Maybe, but I’m keeping it. I still need the scale for motivation on the days that we are “friends.” On the other days, I will rely on a consensus from my blood pressure, my clothes and from the woman in the mirror, before I allow the number on the scale to exert any power over my day.