Step Off the Scale

When you are sick with an eating disorder, it can easily seem like there is nothing more important than the scale. It is the tool by which you measure your progress, success, and worth. I remember when I was very sick, I would weigh myself five, six, seven times a day. When I woke up, after every meal or drink, when I went to bed. And the number that I found there would be the sole indicator of my mood. if the number was lower, I was ecstatic. I had succeeded! I felt proud, and had a small minute of feeling good. However, when the number was higher, or even the same as the last time I'd weighed myself, it meant that I had failed. I would feel horrible, disgusting, and like a failure, and would restrict or binge/purge accordingly to both punish myself, and try to lose the weight I was so desperate to.

The thing about the scale is though, no matter what the number is that it shows you, you will never be satisfied. When you are sick, the scale will never give you a number that you are truly happy with. Thats why as you begin your journey of recovery, stepping off the scale is one of the most important things you can do.

1. The number will be hard to see

When you begin recovery, often you will need to gain weight, or at least maintain weight, in order to get your body to a healthy place. This will be very difficult even without the scale constantly reminding you of the fact that you are not losing.  If you are able to stay away form the scale when you are going through this process, it will make things much easier on yourself, and will have a smoother time with this transition into your recovered eating and body.

2. the number doesn't matter

One of the main goals and milestones in recovery from your eating disorder is making it so that the number on the scale no longer has any meaning or value to you. That number does nothing in saying how heathy you are, how beautiful, or anything about your value or worth. If this is the goal, and you want to get there, then why would you want to continue stepping on the scale? You wouldn't! And you would want to do everything in your power to make that number matter less. And the only way to begin to make that number irrelevant and unimportant to you, is to stop weighing yourself altogether.

3. Your weight fluctuates

Your weight does not stay stagnant throughout the day. If you were to weigh yourself in the morning, by that night, it could easily be hugely different! Your weight changes with every meal you eat, everything you drink, every exercise you do. Not to mention other factors such as hormones and time of the day/month. If you were to rely on the scale for your worth, value, and mood, like so many people suffering from an eating disorder do, you would constantly be on a roller coaster of emotions as the number went up and down. The changing number in no way means you are gaining weight, it just means you have more food, water, hormones, or other factors in your body.

When you are in the midst of an eating disorder, the logic and reason in this can be hard to see. For such a long time, the scale has been your faithful friend, The only one who seemed to tell you the truth. You could always count on the scale to give you cold, hard facts. To tell you in numbers just how fat you were, and just how far you had to go. 

Unfortunately though, Everything the scale has ever told you is a lie. It in no way tells you anything other than your relation with gravity at any given moment. It doesn't tell you how fat or thin you are, how healthy or sick, how beautiful, how important, how full of life, or how valuable you are.

So, what can you do? I know that getting rid of the scale can be one of the hardest and scariest things you have done in recovery so far. You may have even tried to stay away from it, but it keeps calling you back. There are things you can do though, ways to make this transition easier. You can:

• Enlist the help of someone who loves you, your mom, sister, friend, or even therapist. Have them hold it for you, and ask them not to cave in and let you have it when you beg. It will be hard, and you might get upset with them, but remember that they only love you and want the best for you.
• Decorate your scale with inspirational messages that will help you remember that you are worth more, and to not use it. This can be good when you go to use the scale, and also very therapeutic and cathartic to decorate. 

• My favorite suggestion, Smash it!! This is honestly so cathartic, so therapeutic, and so much fun! The symbolism is so great, physically saying that the scale means nothing to you, and has done nothing but hurt you and keep you from recovery. I would highly suggest this, to anyone who is serious about recovery, or even who just wants to be!