“She rediscovered her identity, and everything shifted.” ~Lalah Delia
The scale. Those unsettling words and those frightening figures. It can instill dread in the heart of any generally content individual. We observe guidelines and BMI charts and perpetually think, “It ought to be reduced.”
Have you ever been enjoying a perfectly fine day, then suddenly pondered, “Maybe I ought to step on the scale?” And just like that, your day is spoiled.
How can a $20 bathroom scale dictate our self-esteem?
I recall standing on the scale and seeing figures that somehow dictated my self-worth. What an absurd method to gauge our value. Yet so many of us succumb to this. Somewhere along the line, we begin to believe that a lower weight somehow equates to greater worth.
Growing up in the 1990s, I remember being advised to aim for a weight of 120 pounds. Thanks to Seventeen Magazine and the fashion industry. Admittedly, I’m not very tall. But that figure became something I pursued for years. I weighed myself daily without fail. I didn’t care about my energy levels or how I felt. What mattered was the scale’s reading. If I could just achieve that elusive number, everything would fall into place.
All around me, the message was consistent: do more, consume less, weigh less. If I could just obtain that figure, somehow, I would transform into the most deserving version of myself.
People would praise my weight loss, oblivious to the fact that I was often starving and worn out. I felt awful, yet the scale conveyed a favorable reading. It never added up.
During that period, I had taken up running following the loss of my grandmother. The endorphins offered a positive outlet for my grief. Running allowed me to navigate the sorrow. However, as often happens, it shifted into something negative.
I also came to realize something—it made me smaller.
For reasons unknown, that made me feel better about who I was. Thus, for many years, I learned that if I ran enough and ate sparingly, I could remain small. I recall being told in my early twenties that my body fat was too low. At that moment, I wore it as a badge of honor. In retrospect, it seems quite ludicrous.
Life, of course, has a way of altering things. After four pregnancies, the number on the scale became increasingly difficult to manage. Each time my weight rose, I returned to running to attempt to lower it again. After every pregnancy, it became more challenging.
Even when I incorporated strength training, my focus wasn’t on building strength. It was about expending more calories. Everything revolved around satisfying the scale. If I had to do jumping jacks between every workout to burn more calories, I did it. I never considered if I was getting stronger. To tell the truth, it didn’t matter.
Then something unforeseen occurred.
After a fall from my horse injured my ankle—and my ego—I could no longer run as I once did. Instead, I began strength training from a new perspective. I wasn’t training to burn calories. I was training to build strength. If I couldn’t run, I still needed to be able to move effectively.
I desired to lift things. Move things. Feel competent in my body.
And then something peculiar started to happen. People began telling me I looked as though I had lost weight.
But when I checked the scale, the number hadn’t decreased. In fact, it had risen.
I recalled thinking, “That’s strange… my scale reads this, yet my old jeans fit again.”
Gradually, it became clear to me.
Perhaps the scale wasn’t revealing the entire story.
For years I thought the scale represented the truth about my health. What I eventually understood is that it was merely indicating how much gravity