The One Thing I Used To Do Daily, But Will Never Do Again

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I used to have the most beautiful scale.

It was one of those fancy Hammacher Schlemmer scales that told me my weight down to the last ounce. Every day, I hopped onto it, reassuring myself that I was still thin, that my body was still in tip-top shape from all my healthy eating and tedious hours of exercising.

Well, that is until my beautiful fancy scale started playing mind tricks on me. Slowly, the ounces crept up little by little. Was it the extra chocolate I allowed myself? Did my scale register that I gave myself a day off from my Peloton? Or was my scale telling me I was getting older and my metabolism wasn’t functioning like it did in my 20s?

I couldn’t be sure.

So, I continued my daily trek to the basement bathroom, where my beloved scale lived, to weigh myself without clothing. I tried again later in the day, after a workout and again first thing in the morning, to no avail. Something had gone haywire in my body, causing those numbers to climb — and I was going to fix the issue.

I tried eating less. My already slim figure didn’t appreciate being punished with celery and lettuce for lunch, and it rebelled by piling pounds on that not-so-beautiful-anymore Hammacher Schlemmer scale. I upped the ante on my workouts, adding 10 minutes in the morning and 15 just before bed. Still, the scale wouldn’t go down.

It was around this time — while I was stress dieting and exercising simply to lower the numbers on the scale — that I noticed my 14-year-old daughter was paying attention to it as well.

She was weighing herself daily, too, scowling at the scale, even as I reassured her that she is beautiful, that she is growing, that the scale fluctuates and it had nothing to do with what she ate or how much she exercised or anything logical. But she continued to weigh herself.

That’s when I decided to toss it.

We don’t need a fancy scale to tell us that we ate too much chocolate or skipped a workout or 10.

Now that it’s been gone for two months, I can report a few big observations. First, I have no idea how much I weigh. I still exercise daily but allow myself extra dessert, and I’m not worried an inanimate object will go up or down. I know that I’m happy in my body and that it’s grateful for not being punished for trying its best to digest my food, keep me energized and support me.

Breaking up with my scale has done wonders for my mental health. I don’t put so much pressure on myself to eat less because I’m not going to weigh myself in the morning. I’m not exercising like a maniac and I’m giving myself more leeway. A number on the scale shouldn’t dictate my self-worth, and since I’m unable to separate the two (probably stemming from years of indoctrination from society, which dictates our BMI and our perfect weight range), the easiest thing to do was simply remove the obstacle.

I have other obsessions. I’m a Type A person. So, when I stopped thinking about the numbers on the scale, my mind was free to think about other things. Like my garden (why can’t my plants stay alive?), my looming work deadlines and my dog’s random itching. Honestly, I prefer to obsess over these than the numbers on my scale. Sure, I’d love to obsess over nothing, but that’s another story for another day. For now, my happiness is officially out of my scale’s hands.

It was probably the quickest fix to one of my life’s major issues — and I totally recommend it.

How many of you weigh yourself daily? Let us know in the comments below.