Some of you who came here from “The Weighting Game” may remember my five month, Scale-free stint. I went from December of 2007 to June 2008 and the soles of my feet never touched the icky metal scale at my gym. Considering we don’t own a scale at home, I was numbers-free… and loved it. It was so wonderfully freeing to not have that constant reminder—a number that had the power to make me happy or sad. Women in my locker room would line up kicking off their flip flops, pulling scrunchies out of their hair just to get the number on the scale to drop a half pound. Meanwhile I worked out, showered, air-dried (kidding) and left. As I wrote in June, I remember practically skipping along Michigan Avenue downtown feeling like Mary Tyler Moore in her famous hat-tossing scene thinking “I’m free!”
Then I decided, stupidly, to hop on The Scale. The impetus has escaped me now, but I’m sure it was something totally dumb like having eaten a whoopie pie in a PMS-induced frenzy the night before. And the scale showed that I had indeed put on just a few pounds. And here’s the thing, driving home I felt flooded with so many emotions; anger, I felt for getting on the scale. Anger over actually being angry. Sad because maybe these emotions meant I wasn’t as “healthy” as I thought I was (emotionally). Lastly, thrilled because, you know what, I was handling it and I realized it didn’t make a damn difference.
It’s now January 6th 2009 and one of my promises I’ve made myself for the new year is to not get on the scale. Definitely not for the first month and maybe even hopefully longer. I made a deal with myself and wrote on my calendar on February 1st “get on scale?” so now I’m tossing it out of my mind for the next three weeks, eating what I want, exercising when I want, and when February rolls around, I might hop on. I might forget about it. Likely I’ll blog about it here. Does anyone care to join me in a month of abstaining? Or do you find that weighing yourself helps keep you on track? Or do you feel in a way addicted to it and simply can’t get off? Let me know, I’m really interested.
