Your Worth in 3 Digits: The Tyranny of the Scale

I often catch myself thinking those crazy thoughts of my earlier years, like: oh, if I could just lose 10 more pounds, or being thin is everything, or ...even crazier, well, at least with this clear liquid diet, courtesy of my recent bout with diverticulitis, I will lose a few pounds.

Now, when you look at being ill and equate it with the win of losing weight, something just aint right! Many other women have admitted to me that they actually like that when they are sick, at least they lose weight.

I've been working on a healthy body image and relationship with food pretty much my whole life. I have grown to appreciate food as "nurturing" and "nourishing" and not the evil I need to avoid in order to lose weight.

Still, though, when I find myself at the doctor's office, as I did last Sunday after being up all night in pain, I whispered to the nurse as I stepped reluctantly on the scale, "Please, don't tell me."

Now, she laughed and seemed to understand as I said that I often obsess on the number, but of course, my little pea brain did not stop. As the doctor came in to talk and examine me, my eyes took a glance at the paper on the folder, zeroing in on the number, the dreaded number that would tell me what a fatty I still was, despite my pretty intense efforts to eat healthy and work out regularly. I LOOKED! Although the number was definitely not on my list of favorite weights to be, I found myself challenging what it meant. I thought, hmm, this is interesting, as I seem to be in my smallest size clothes right now.

I got home and looked at a couple of recent pictures that I took while getting some sunshine in my backyard. I noted the growing definition of my ab muscles and the strength of my shoulders. I was able to appreciate that all of this picture happened to add up to the weight on that scale. And somehow, some way, I was liberated..at least for the moment.

Of course, that didn't stop me from jumping on my WiiFit board several days later to weigh myself. Damn, I thought, at least I'm down 5 lbs from that dreaded dr. office scale. So much for my liberation.

I'm going to take a big risk here, and share that pic of me and share the weight from that scale, because I think that many healthy, fit women like me will never see those numbers we hear about on the celebrity pages. I will probably never weigh in the 130's again, and for once, that is ok. If you are fit and healthy, it doesn't matter so much what that scale says.

If this is what 150 lbs. looks like, then hey, I'll take it.

So how do you stop the madness of judging your worth by the scale?