This post is about weight. I know it is a triggering subject for a lot of people so please keep that in mind and stop reading if you know this is a sensitive topic for you.
Gosh I dislike them so much. More than calorie counting I think. Those pesky scales have governed my life and thinking for over a year now. Wow. Kind of taken me by surprise to even write that out. It has been way tooooo long in my personal opinion.
It all started when I was much younger and beginning those glorious days of puberty. I found a set of weighing scales in my parents bathroom. Curious, I stood on them, saw the number, mentally noted it and did not think much more on it. However, before I knew it girls were in the playground aged 11 and 12 comparing their weights. Always one of the bigger girls in my class, I found myself increasingly isolated both in how I looked and my assigned scale number. I flirted with weight loss for a bit, some limited restriction entered my life. My number got a bit lower to one I deemed at the time “semi-satisfactory”; life took over though, a new school and everything that came with it meant I took a rain check on my date with the scales.
Cut to 2020: a pandemic, widespread lockdown, feeling out of control, confused and lost. The scales were winking at me in the bathroom and I realised I wanted to regain some autonomy. I had already been thinking about shedding a few pounds and I saw this as the perfect opportunity. No more A-levels and an abundance of time to put into a toxic eating disorder.
The scales, unlike my then reality, made sense. It was a number that went up or down depending on how much I restricted and exercised.
At first I was happy and excited when I saw that number go down. It was so satisfactory to see all that hard work I was putting into a daily exercise regime and diet pay off. The number dropped fast and so did my clothing size. I felt more confident in my body every time I saw it fall by even 1/2 a pound. But for me, as with most people, nothing was ever quite good enough for that annoying ED in my head…
Kevin decided that it was a norm for that number to go down every day and I wasn’t even really allowed to be truly happy when it did. If it didn’t go down each morning the ensuing day would involve exercising to the point of almost passing out and eating as little as I could get away with. I knew it wasn’t right and yet I let those scales trap me. The number had to keep on going down and if it didn’t I became increasingly angry, frustrated and extreme in my methods of restriction. I was trying to control the uncontrollable and consequently letting it control me.
After I accepted I had a problem and needed help weighins became a twice weekly rather than three times daily affair. I worked on it a lot in treatment, my relationship with weight and everything it meant to me. It was so hard to see that number go up and I fought it really hard. At first when I went into treatment I was doing it for my parents. Kevin told me: ‘just grin and bear it and it will get them off your back’.
Four weeks in, however, I had my review. Of course we had to speak about my weight and it was showing that, although mentally I had made a lot of progress, physically I had not quite caught up. Something flipped I think. I realised that the only way to battle this and reclaim my mind, my gap year, my entire life and actually feel REAL control was to get that number up. Give my body the nourishment and strength it most desperately needed and scariest of all put on weight. I know that might seem like a lot of people’s idea of heaven but for me it was terrifying.
I pushed through it though and that number increased. I was fully present at all our group sessions when we spoke about weight and even when the number went up I didn’t ‘fall short’ and I stayed committed to my meal plan.
I know the number still needs to go up a bit because I still think about it toooo much and give it a bit toooo much importance. I want to and am trying so hard to disassociate my self worth with those bloody scales but it is really difficult. I hope sometime soon I will reach that point. For the time being I have put my hands up and just accepted that, ‘nothing changes if nothing changes’ and so that number needs to keep on going up.
As we used to do at the end of some of my group sessions I am going to ‘take something away’ and ‘leave something behind’ after writing this post.
I am taking away that seeing a number go down does not and never will equate to happiness.
I will leave behind my self worth ever being defined by a stupid set of scales.
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