Ms.

[Chungui]

I am embarrassed about not being able to throw out my scale...any help appreciated

[SugarcubeOD]

You don't have to throw it out... you just need to not use it for 30 days... can you hide it or store it at a friend's house?  Nothing to be embarrassed about, the diet industry and media has made scales and weight something that we're supposed to be obsessed with... You're stronger than that tho, I know it!

[Lorna from Canada]

Hey @Chungui

I hear ya. It's very, very difficult to throw out your scale permanently. Like Sugar says - we are bombarded with messages about the number we should be. I have never seen a Woman's magazine with a title "Have looser pants in 10 days!" It's always a number (usually unrealistic) and the only way we get numbers is from the scale. It is beaten into us to lose weight but we only interpret that through a single measure - the number going down. Nothing but the number matters to us. It's quite silly when we think about it rationally.

I had an unhealthy relationship with the scale for many, many years. After a major weightloss following the births of my children, I weighed myself 3 times a day for years. Utter insanity. I was down to once a week for awhile but knew that the number on it was dictating both my mood and my self esteem. This became most evident after the completion of my first W30. I could not wait to get on the scale! I felt better than I had in years - I was sleeping well through the night in a way I hadn't since 1985. I was less anxious and more upbeat. My clothes and rings were loose. My workouts were super charged. A chronic plantar fasciitis that had troubled me through 5 long years of every treatment (save surgery) known to mankind had simply disappeared - that was astonishing to me! I had no hip pain and no stomach pain and never felt hungry. It was great and then I stepped on the scale. That 11lb weight loss became the only thing that mattered - it was the highest single month weightloss number I had ever experienced! I became fixated on losing more and was back to weighing myself all the time. All of the other major benefits faded into the background and the first thing I told people when I talked about W30 was that I had lost 11 lbs in one month. That's when it dawned on me how ridiculous weighing myself was because that number was artificial and meaningless in the light of everything else I had accomplished and experienced. I got rid of my scale that day and have never looked back.

Anyway - no easy way to give it up but taking a break for 30 days might inform you better about what you want to do for the long haul. Like Sugar says - you can do it!

[Rebecca001]

I have the same issue with my scales and this time I really want to tackle it. I decided not to weigh myself after my 2nd W30 and still haven’t now after 40 days. The fact that I want to (really badly some days) is something I am giving a lot of thought to. I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that I want to weigh myself more when I feel rubbish than when I feel good. It’s as if that number is a stick to whack myself with when I already feel low. And as @Lorna from Canadasays above, that number is bigger than all the good things, the benefits, the NSVs. So, a bit like the sugar dragon, to slay it you have to starve it out- I’ve decided I’m not weighing myself until I get to a point where I don’t care what it says anymore (at which point, I hope I won’t even think about weighing myself?!)