To continue our conversation about that contraption we all know so well, I want to share someone’s personal story with you. I hope you enjoy Amy’s inspirational words below. (Thanks for sharing, Amy!)
Best,
Jenni
My Love Hate Relationship with the Scale and Numbers
by Amy P., Portsmouth, NH
I’ll never forget that day, I wanted to celebrate, I was so proud. It was the day I was at the doctors office for one of those back to school physicals. I saw on the scale I had reached 100 lbs. I thought that was the coolest number. I was so excited to tell everyone. That was back when I loved math and I loved numbers. I didn’t care about the size of my body or how my legs looked in my Pop Warner Cheerleading Skirt. I loved scales and I loved when the numbers went up gaining weight meant I was growing up to be big and strong. I wanted to grow up and be big and strong more than anything in the world. I knew I needed to be big and strong to be able to protect myself from all of the dangerous things I had already experienced in life. But then something happened….
When I started to go through puberty my relationship with my body began to change. I still wanted to be strong, but I really wanted to be pretty. I remember my sisters always being smaller than me (never considering they were younger) and my mother with her face always in the mirror. They would always shop in this store called 5 7 9 which meant it only carried those sizes. I couldn’t fit into those sizes so I always had to shop at the local department store. I hated it. This is when my grades in math began to decline and my love for big numbers started to fail. My love for little numbers and little people started to blossom. My mother enrolled me in a local exercise class with all adults. I still loved the scale and was on it constantly to check and see if the numbers were going down…
For the next 10 years my love of low numbers grew into an obsession. I always wanted to be a lower weight. I brought a scale with me everywhere and would weight myself sometimes fifty times a day to make sure the number was low enough. I even brought the scale to classes in my backpack and would go to the bathroom in the middle of class to check the numbers. The problem was, the numbers were never low enough…
By the time I was out of undergrad college I had full-fledged anorexia. The numbers continued to go down and like I said before, I was never satisfied. I ended up having heart palpitations and many other medical problems due to my obsession with numbers. I ended up in the hospital, actually several hospitals before I realized that these numbers were going to kill me…
I’ll never forget the day, I had been out of the hospital for around six months. It was around 10:30pm on a cold winter night. I had just finished weighing myself and of course the number was not low enough. I got mad, but this time not at me. I got mad at the scale for controlling my life for so long. I busted out the permanent markers and wrote all over my scale. I wrote how much I hated my scale and all that it had taken away from me. I also wrote “You are not going to control me anymore!” By the time I was done expressing my anger towards my scale I decided I needed to get rid of it...
I called my friend Melissa who lived in the area and told her what was going on. She was happy to come and pick me up at what was now midnight. We drove to the ocean, which is close to my house. We walked down a pier and I hesitated and shed a few tears for a couple of minutes. Melissa was very supportive, gave me hugs, and reminded me of all of the work I had done towards beating my eating disorder. I thought about it for another minute, agreed with her, then I threw my scale off the pier into the ocean…
I would like to say since that day I haven’t known my weight but I have not made it a priority. I no longer have a scale in my home, when I go to the doctors I get weighed backwards. The scale has tempted me at times, like when I have gone to a friend’s house and their scale was in the bathroom. I can’t say I haven’t got naked real quick and jumped on it. But I know now that weight fluctuates so much throughout the day. I also know that whenever I get on the scale or know my weight it is sort of like punishing myself, because I am never really satisfied with the number. It has been a long time since I have known my weight. My doctor tells me that I am at a healthy weight and most days I feel good about myself. I am also a strong and independent adult who is not obsessed with being a high or a low number. I am able to protect myself most of life’s dangers and really that’s what I wanted when I was that little girl…
