Overcoming Obsession with Weight: Letting go of the scale for good

I used to be obsessed with my weight. I felt I only was valuable if I was losing weight. I had no bottom to how much weight I wanted to lose – the more the better. Even at my lowest weight I thought I could lose more.

I would weigh myself daily. It would be the very first thing I did when I woke up. I would be thrilled if the number went down. I would feel relief that I was safe another day. I was horrified when the number went up. If the number was up, I felt I was “bad”, and it led me to restrict harder that day. 

What I weighed ruled my life. It determined my worth, my mood, my behaviors, and my thoughts. I was scared of food because I felt everything I ate would make me gain weight. And my weight fluctuated a lot over the years since my behaviors were so dramatic. The weight fluctuations led me to believe food and my body could not be trusted. 

So how did I give up the scale for good? Some people can go cold turkey from weighing and decide no more. I found when I did that, I would end up with a new scale not long after giving it up. For me, what worked was a slow, gradual decrease of weighing. I had to see that I could be safe without knowing the number. 

It was my substance use therapist who suggested I decrease the number of times a week I weighed myself. I started skipping one day, then two, then I went down to once a week. I did that for a while. Then one day towards the holidays, my previous dietitian suggested I gift my scales (I had multiple – I preferred the number reported on one scale versus the other) to her and my eating disorder therapist.

I don’t know why I was feeling so motivated or agreeable that day, normally I was more resistant, but after the session, I went upstairs, grabbed both my scales, gift-wrapped them because it was the holidays and it seemed appropriate, and got in my car and took them to my dietitian’s office. I knew if I did not act on the motivation then, I would back out. 

I had given up many scales over the years, always to go back out and buy a new one. I don’t know what made this time stick, other than I had solid professional support, helpful accountability, and a willingness to tolerate uncertainty and discomfort. I have not weighed myself since. It’s been over four years.

I may have given up the scale, but for a long time even after that, I still feared gaining weight. I had a number that I was scared to get to. It was the healthy weight range that I would always gain to in treatment. I tried to stay below that number for years and because of that, I was in quasi-recovery, which seemed even harder to maintain than being in the eating disorder. It took gaining more weight for me to get over the fear. I even gained above that dreaded number.

I saw I could handle weight gain when it did happen. Nothing catastrophic happened when I gained weight. People did not treat me any differently and I could still live my life. One could argue my life even improved.

I had been personally free of the scale, but for years I was getting weighed by my providers. Even after I gave up my scales, being weighed by providers continued. I dreaded getting weighed before my appointments. For one thing, I hated the act of stepping on the scale, traumatized from too many times doing that in treatment, but for another, the number would determine how my sessions would go. It would decide if I was “good” or “bad” that week. It determined if we could talk about life or if I would get a lecture about why I needed to eat and do better. 

I asked my providers if I could stop the weekly weighing at appointments. That was one of the best decisions I made. I thought it was going to take a lot of convincing my providers to let me stop, as they monitored me for fear I would slip and then free fall. The trust they showed me was a sign of how far I had come. It showed I finally was doing better in my recovery. 

Letting go of the scale was one of the first steps I took towards recovery. And it was a turning point. Weight was central to my eating disorder and no longer weighing myself lessened the focus on it.

For years I didn’t know what I weighed. I preferred not to know because the number was never going to be acceptable. That said, at a recent doctor’s appointment, I saw my weight. I asked the nurse not to tell me, I stepped on the scale backwards, and I asked her not to put it in my after visit summary. I did everything right.

At the end of the appointment, a different nurse brings me my after visit summary, turns the page, and my weight was right there staring at me. I was surprised to see it. I wasn’t expecting it. That said, it wasn’t as surprising as I would have thought because the number was what I thought I weighed. It just confirmed what I already knew.

Yes, my eating disorder would prefer it if I weighed less. Of course the eating disorder would prefer that. But what has changed is I don’t feel compelled to lose weight. I haven’t altered my behaviors and I don’t plan to. Nothing has changed about me as a person by me knowing my weight.

The freedom I have with my eating now that weight isn’t central to my life is incredible. The mental energy I spent obsessing about my weight can now be spent on more meaningful activities. I have time to spend with friends, I can concentrate more fully at work, and thoughts of food and my body no longer rule or dictate my day.

I no longer believe food will make me gain weight. I trust my body to handle the food. Will I ever gain weight again, probably. Bodies change with time and as we age. But I’ve been through weight gain before and handled it, so I know I can handle it again.