How do you think about or use the scale? Personally, I forget about it, or ignore it for months, or use it occasionally, or daily. I basically don't worry about it at all. Whatever feels right that day is fine, which I find easier than all the declarations I used to make about smashing it, not being allowed to go near it, or only using it on a predetermined schedule. I kind of did the same thing with food. Normalize, habituate, get bored, don't assign meaning. For me, that's the middle ground between obsess and forbid. Vowing not to do something only makes me want to do it right now. LOL
I do understand that some people find it really helpful or necessary not to weigh at all. I'm curious what you see as the pros and cons.
I’m terrified of the scale, that one number has meant so much in the past. Now when I go to the doctors office and they weigh me, I close my eyes and tell them to please not tell me. The funny thing is that now our weights are written in bold on our visit summary sheets they print out and give you when you leave and I sometimes accidentally see the number! I weighed myself at home a month or two ago because I was concerned about how much weight I’d lost and it was much more than I’d realized-i know I should check and monitor but there is just still too much judgement tied to that simple number.
I go back and forth with the scale all the time. I went a long time without weighing sort of to try to rewire my brain to believing that it didn't matter and also to stop my brain from using a scale weight to influence how I ate. Right now I'm back into weighing everyday. I feel as though I'm pretty unattached to what I see most of the time, but I do think that on a subconscious level it still effects me. I think I am more impacted by how my clothes are fitting and what I see in the mirror than I am by the number on the scale. But I could just be telling myself a story with that.
I went the longest without stepping on the scale when I was going through the Intuitive Eating Workbook. I learned to pay attention to other cues to assess how I was doing, which was really helpful. From then on, it wasn't all about a number or body checking. You can build trust in yourself and the process without any big setbacks caused by seeing numbers.
When curiosity finally got the better of me, there weren't any surprises. I knew I felt better, enjoyed food more, had plenty of energy, recovered well, and performed better. So, at that point, it's not like I was going to see a number and decide everything was terrible. The other markers of progress were so clearly positive that it didn't actually matter what I weighed.
I was a really sporadic weigher from then until I started eating more plant-based. Then, I could tell I was losing weight, but that was not my intention at all. Frail has no part in my badass old person plan. So, I started stepping on the scale more often to assess how my efforts at eating enough for weight stability were going. Then full-blown menopause hit and my efforts to eat enough seemed to be going a little too well. I was too often snacking all day at work, feeling completely stuffed after eating, or finding myself not at all hungry for meals. That disconnect between my appetite and how much I was consuming was readily apparent without the scale, but I still looked at it several times a week.
Currently, everything has leveled off. I feel really in sync with eating until I'm completely satisfied and noticing how that feels, which in turn has stabilized my weight. I know it's stable because I tend to step on the scale most mornings, wearing my heavy sweatshirt, pajama leggings, and fuzzy slippers. I can't be bothered to undress anymore. I don't care what the exact number is. At this point, I think I weigh out of habit more than anything. Wash face, brush teeth, step on scale. Though, for me, it's a helpful habit. I seem to eat both more freely and more in line with my actual needs when I have a general idea that there's nothing to see on the scale. It used to be (pre intuitive eating) that if I went long stretches without weighing, I would either imagine the worst and restrict just in case, or feel a sense of having "blown it" and then engage in "now's my chance" eating before some inevitable future crackdown. For me right now, I like knowing what I weigh. Emotionally, it's on the same level as the toothbrushing, a thing I do as part of basic, boring self-care. But that may only be because I went through that period of tuning in and building trust in my body separate from weight.
That's probably a really convoluted explanation, 😄 but the point is that I understand and respect whatever anyone else finds helpful. I don't think there is one right approach. There's no reason to judge yourself harshly if you can't stay off the scale, or if you get emotional when you step on it, or if you can't stick to someone else's rules about it. You do you.
I still weigh myself at least three times a week. Which means I'm half-assing my Intuitive Eating process, because weighing is a no-no in that framework. But it drives me crazy not knowing my scale number.
I'm not saying weighing yourself every day is a bad thing. However, I know for my current situational context, where I'm trying to abandon wellness and diet-thinking, it's something I'm struggling to relinquish.
I don’t weigh myself anymore. I haven’t stepped on the scale in at least 6 months. For me it doesn’t add anything useful to me in my life knowing the number. Every time I told myself I could handle the number or I was just curious, it has always ended in a meltdown of self hate. I have put so much meaning into those numbers on the scale during my life. They are embedded into my brain and I don’t know if they will ever lose their power. So for now, I’m fine without the number. At least in Australia, weight is rarely checked during Drs appointments so it is not something that is forced onto me either.