Destroy Your Scale
Why I threw my scale away and never looked back
You’re not required to know how much you weigh. There is no law. Knowing how much you weigh doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t make a difference in your day-to-day life. In fact, NOT knowing might make a really positive difference.
A few years ago, I realized that the numbers on the scale were having this huge impact on my emotional state. If they went up, I felt frustrated and angry with myself for my failures. If they went down, I felt like I was cleansed, absolved, purified. I felt like I was meeting the expectations that the world had of me to be acceptably thin. I was doing the right things. And one day I thought, “this is bullshit.”
The numbers on the scale didn’t really have anything to do with how I actually physically felt. There were days when I was feeling great, but the numbers on the scale told me I shouldn’t. And suddenly I didn’t. Once I realized how much control those dumb numbers were having on my emotional state, I didn’t want that in my life anymore. I didn’t want this dumb square of plastic and metal to have that much control over me.
So I stopped. I got rid of that scale. I haven’t weighed myself for a long time. It’s not that I stopped caring about my health. I just didn’t want my weight to be a stand-in for my actual health.
I also don’t get weighed at the doctor’s office. Because you know what? The doctor isn’t entitled to know how much I weigh. There is no law that says she is. There are other indicators that she should be using to tell how healthy or not healthy I am.
Weight is a lazy metric for health. I am planning to do a deep dive into the science about weight and health, as well as the sociological research into this connection and how it has influenced the practice of medicine. But for now, I just want you to know, you don’t have to get weighed at the doctor’s office if you don’t want to.
I just say, “I prefer not to be weighed,” when they walk me to the scale. No one has ever pressured me to be weighed or said anything at all to me about it. They typically just say, “Ok,” and we continue on our way. Occasionally someone will ask me how much I weigh in lieu of being weighed. I tell them I don’t know, and that’s that. The first time I told them I didn’t want to be weighed I was so worried that I would have to justify myself, but no one batted an eye.
Seriously. It’s not required. You don’t have to know that information. It doesn’t have to matter. It doesn’t have to have any impact on your life. You can destroy your scale and nothing bad will happen to you. On the contrary…I suspect it will be the beginning of a lot more good things.
Don’t let that dumb number control how you feel. YOU get to control how you feel. Throw that scale in the garbage and let it go.