It’s Official: I’m Unchained From the Scale!

TA-DA!

Those, my friends, are the batteries out of my scale, a.k.a. my Weight Watchers branded silver shackles! At first I was going to do something dramatic like take a video of me smashing my scale to bits or tossing it out of my window but the former seemed too wasteful for a frugal girl like me and the latter was simply too dangerous with as many children as I have running around my house. Oh, I’m not worried about hitting them – they move fast – but rather that they’d see mommy chucking things out the window and think all the appliances are fair game for defenestration. You may recall these are the same children that literally swung from my chandelier and ripped it right out of the ceiling.

So, the dramatic options exhausted, I went with practical. I took the batteries out and threw them away*. That way, if I ever want to weigh myself again I’ll have to drive all the way to the store first and hopefully the ten intervening minutes will be enough for me to regain my senses.

What it boils down to is this: You guys were right. And I knew going in to it, writing that post about finding my “best” weight, that the first thing everyone would say to me is to chuck the scale. You’ve told me to do it before. So has my sister – hundreds of times, bless her heart. But you know how sometimes you don’t really hear people until you’re ready for their advice? I’m ready now. I can’t obsess over a number I don’t know, right?

This morning I did not weigh myself. At first I had a panic attack – yes, seriously – but I managed to calm down with yogic breathing and after about 10 minutes I felt fine. I think I’m finally figuring out that “fat” has everything to do with the state of my mind and very little to do with the state of my thighs.

Some of you suggested that I make a separate Great Fitness Experiment about ditching the scale but I think it’s best to just roll it in with November and December’s Rachel Cosgrove Experiment because 1) Got to keep going with this inertia – if I think about it too much I probably won’t go through with it and 2) Rachel actually tells you not to weigh yourself while on her program. Yeah I know, I kinda forgot to mention that part when I was explaining all the “rules.” Rachel’s point is that this program is designed to build muscle and often people will gain weight (or not lose as much weight as they think they should be) as they gain muscle. In the book she asks if you would rather weigh 50 pounds more but fit into your dream jeans or weigh your dream weight but not fit into your jeans. You’d think it would be a no-brainer but she says you’d be amazed at how many women choose the latter option, their number is that important to them. I’m choosing the muscle option. (And I’d better be building some serious muscle because hoo-boy am I SORE. My butt is threatening to go on strike if I make it do any more lunges.)

In order to measure my lean mass, I had my body fat percentage taken at the beginning of the Experiment and I’ll have it repeated at the end. I also took measurements of various body parts which I’ll repeat at the end. I know these are still numbers but for some reason I don’t get as attached to – or as emotionally involved with – these numbers. Probably because my biceps measurement doesn’t fluctuate on a daily basis. I also have my jeans that I feel good in and can use as reality check when I need one. (Rachel calls those “thermometer jeans” – I suppose so you can measure your “hotness” by them.)

So thank you thank you thank you for your advice and your amazing patience with me as I worked through the mental stuff. This feels like the final big step I needed to take with Intuitive Eating. I’m free from the tyranny of the scale. And it feels good! (At least for now, I do anticipate some panic in the future, especially at that time of the month but I’ll take it day by day.)

Have you ever been unable to do something that you knew you needed to – until one day the moment just arrived and suddenly it was fine? Do you have thermometer jeans? How would you answer the muscle vs. weight question?

*Okay, first I threw them in the garbage but then I remembered you are never supposed to throw batteries away because that’s reallllyyyy bad for the environment and the last thing I need is an angry polar bear showing up at my door although that would help keep the kidlets from destroying various expensive household items but Child Services probably wouldn’t appreciate the Wild Animal school of discipline so anyhow I fished the batteries back out of the garbage and instead put them in my husband’s pile of paint cans and whatnot to take to the recycling center and then wrote the longest run-on sentence in the history of humankind just to make sure everyone knows that I did not, actually, add batteries to our landfill. The end.