My Scale

... I broke it.  I broke my scale.

No, it is not what you are thinking.  Although in the years since I started (sometimes loosely) following a Nutritarian diet, my weight has fluctuated from stress, too much socializing (oh, beer!), and occasional binge eating from food addictions that I continually need to work on, my weight hasn't gone up nearly enough to result in breaking a scale from my weight.  My husband weighs more than me and uses it often, for Heavens sake!

I also did not maliciously break it for telling me anything I did not want to hear.  Nor did I break it to symbolically prove a point that a number on a scale does not reflect my value as a person.  I broke it completely by accident.

The other day I stepped on the scale and got a normal reading.  Since we have had a digital scale, the number blinked and stayed on the screen for a minute or so when it had the final reading.  And every time it did this, I would step off and briefly put a toe on the scale to get it to reset and make my number disappear from the screen.

I don't exactly know why I do this.  Maybe if I see it for too long it will become something of permanency that I have a less chance of escaping.  My husband is the only other one in the house and knows my weight anyways, so it can't be that I'm embarrassed to have him see it.  Maybe some ghost is in the bathroom and I don't want them to know either (If I were a ghost I don't think I would hang out in a small bathroom, but hey, to each ghost his own!).

This particular time when I stepped onto the scale to reset it, I accidentally stepped on the very edge, causing the scale to lift up on the other side, then come crashing down with a loud BANG when I lifted my foot off.  Kevin from the other room: "Oh gosh, what did you break?"

The screen was blank.  In a moment of panic, I stepped back on the scale and heard a scratchy crunchy sound, like sand being rubbed between two surfaces.  Digital reading went crazy, never settling on a number.  Kevin stepped on it and it eventually settled on a reading: 55.8 lbs.  "Look!  I'm good.  I don't need to exercise."  The sad little broken scale went into the garbage. And Kevin and I talked about spending money on a new scale, because we needed one... right?

I generally weigh myself just about every morning.  Sometimes the reading makes me do a little happy dance, sometimes it makes me shrug for being about the same, and sometimes it makes me reconsider what I had consumed the days before (or convince myself that I just need a good trip to the bathroom).  Either which way, it often sets the tone for the day to come, whether that be negative, positive, or indifferent.

But in thinking about this, it struck me.  I let a little square thing that sits on my bathroom floor to have some input into how I go about my day.  The weather?  A bit.  My calendar?  Yes.  But a scale?  How dare I let a scale effect my happiness and how I live my life.

Then I noticed how successful I had been in sticking to the nutritarian guidelines around when my scale broke.  I have been eating more fresh and cooked vegetables as well as more fresh fruit.  I have been paying better attention to satiety and eating only what I need of the right foods.  Now, I'm not going to attribute this positive progress only to not having a scale.  I have also been strict to prep my meals ahead of time and to have plenty of fresh produce available in my fridge.  But I'm guessing my attitude towards food and satiety has been altered a bit while not seeing that blinking number between my toes every morning.

Does this mean we will never own a scale again?  No.  I'm probably going to go buy one today.  But I might just not open it yet.  And when I do open it, I'll probably tuck it away under my sink and only use it weekly, or bi-weekly, or monthly.  I haven't decided.

My point is: I'm grateful that I happened to clumsily break my scale.  Although Kevin isn't super happy to be spending money on a new one (which probably won't be used as much), I'm happy to have been able to go through this impromptu experiment to see how I felt without knowing exactly how gravity was effecting my mass every particular day.  And you know what?  It felt pretty damn great!


Health and Happiness,

Amy