The Scale Isn't Always a Measure of Progress.
The scale isn’t always a measure of progress.
It's Monday morning, and many of us have had our day ruined already by a digital signal flashing up at us from the bathroom floor, reminding us how much mass we have and, therefore, how much space we're allowed to take up in the world. We seem to have a sort of inverse relationship with this number: the larger it is, the more we feel called to shrink.
Rather than letting that determine what we deserve every week, we'd be wise to remember that we’re in these bodies for life, and they (WE!) are so much more than measurements and numbers.
Fitness, whatever that means to each of us individually, is about exploration: we’re learning what movement we love, what foods serve us, and how we can work it all to yield a fulfilling life. Much like Mother Teresa, Wonder Woman didn’t sit around worrying about the size of her thighs; she had shit to do (and probably wanted them to be huge anyway).
And so do you.
Rather than tell you how the scale is nothing more than data and ways to drop the drama (I can help with that too), I’d like to take a moment to reflect: is our body change about feeling powerful, or about some arbitrary number we think will lead to happiness, once we get there?
Nailing down the why behind our goals will help sort out what we're doing, how we're doing it, and how we're showing up to the work. Getting some oomph behind it - knowing why we're chasing what we're chasing - will help us see the parts of the process that serve us, allow us to drop the hustles that don't, and know that we are inherently worthy of connection.
xoxo,
Steph
Want to take the power away from the scale?
In my experience, the easiest way to do this is to stop weighing yourself.
Once we don't feel that number tells us if we're "good" or "bad" (which took me 2 years!), weighing becomes significantly less dramatic. With daily (or near-daily) weighing, we can see that gaining a pound or two in a day because it's earlier in the day or we ate a bigger meal than usual so the food is still in our stomachs is neither abnormal nor a sign of failure. It's easy to have an off, underslept, meh Wednesday reflected on the scale and feel crappy about it for a week until the next weigh-in, remaining caught in the restrict/binge, good/bad cycle.
