Before I was even 10 years old, stepping on a scale was a regular part of life. At nine, my pediatrician was concerned about my weight. She pointed to a BMI chart saying, “This is where you should be,” then her pencil went up to where a lone dot hovered at the top of the page, “and this is where you are.”
My mother was really proactive about helping me get “back on track.”
Two of her sisters struggled with eating disorders and body images issues, so as their weight dropped dangerously low, it was easy for my mother’s own emotional eating to slide under the radar. She struggled with her weight most of her life and she didn’t want that for me.
I understand now, but back then all I knew was that if I stepped onto the scale and the numbers went up, my mom was unhappy. So I did everything in my power to make sure that never happened.
The problem was that while I was becoming obsessed with my weight, I was also becoming obsessed with making other people happy.
These two obsessions would only grow as I got older. Eventually, the struggle to get to an “acceptable” weight wasn’t something I was doing just to make my mother happy, but something I was doing to make everyone happy.
Every time I over-ate, every time I yo-yo’ed, every time something didn’t fit or a man rejected me, I felt like I was letting society down. I was letting the world down by failing to measure up to these unattainable standards.
Living my life this way was exhausting. I was so focused on looking the “right” way. This left no space for me to figure out what I actually thought was important.
Visits to the gym weren’t about savoring the pleasure of making my body move, burning off stress, or getting a nice kick of endorphins. They were about burning off the shame of whatever I had eaten that day. They were about punishing myself for having cravings. I punished myself for having a body that was soft and not having the “willpower” to stay away from food.
Eventually, I started looking for ways to break the cycle. I started going to therapy in my mid-twenties when I finally realized that dedicating my life to trying to look the way the world had me believe I ought to look was making me, you know… DESPERATELY UNHAPPY.
It took me a little while to get to know my therapist, and even longer for me to trust her.
I was worried that in therapy I would be forced to confront my deep inner darkness. Instead, I would come in and tell her I was sad. She would say, “When was the last time you ate a vegetable?” Oftentimes, my unhappiness was coinciding with a lack of the nutrients my body needed to function to its fullest capacity.
It was the first time I ever talked to someone about food and exercise in a setting in which the goal wasn’t getting thin.
The goal was treating my body with respect, learning to listen to it, and striving to figure out how to care for myself. For the first time, I wasn’t focused on all the ways my body wasn’t good enough. It was about how to give the best care to the only vessel I will have while I am alive. And it started making a huge difference.
The biggest change came when I stopped weighing myself.
Nobody told me to do it. I just stopped. I had never in my life stepped on the scale, looked at my weight, and experienced a positive reaction. Even when the number was “good,” I never walked away feeling good. Instead, I felt pressure to stay at that weight. Everything became dangerous and scary, a potential threat to that magical number.
When the number was “bad,” it colored my entire day. Then one day when I had a novel idea. What if I just stopped?
Even thinking about throwing away my scale gave me goosebumps. I had never lived one day as an adult where my weight wasn’t my central focus. The notion that it didn’t have to be that way was beyond my imagination.
When I tried it, I couldn’t believe how it felt.
I could eat what I wanted and do what I wanted. I made adjustments to my diet and gym time based on how my body felt. I indulged in the foods I loved without being concerned I’d pay some sort of price for it.
There were times I wanted to check my weight again. Sometimes I was bigger, other times smaller. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that sometimes I panicked and felt the pressure to jump back into that cycle of weighing and shaming myself.
Ultimately, however, throwing away my scale made me happier than anything ever had. And there was no way I was going to give that up to satiate my passing curiosity.
it didn’t magically fix my self-esteem. That’s not how life works, and it’s certainly not how our relationships with our bodies work, but I no longer view my body as an enemy.
I learned that my body is my ally. This changed not just the way I relate to myself, but how I relate to the world. And there’s absolutely NO going back.
Originally written by Rebecca Jane Stokes on YourTango
Feature Image by i yunmai on Unsplash
