The Weight of the Scale
When I made the transition from high school to college athlete, I began to put on more muscle, as most college athletes do. Year by year I noticed my body was changing, and I kept finding parts of my body that didn’t look the same as before. I fluctuated within about 15 pounds throughout my career, but I’ll never forget stepping on the scale during 3-a days my senior year. I remember the exact room and place the scale was at when I looked down and saw the highest number I had ever seen pop up. I almost had to check and make sure one of my teammates wasn’t stepping on the back of the scale too (slightly dramatic). When I saw the number, my immediate reaction was announcing “PR” to my entire team, which means personal record. Look, our goal was to PR in everything we did when we tested during pre-season..but I can’t say the scale was one of those categories! I was confused because I had worked harder than ever that summer, and was lifting more weight than in the past. It didn’t make sense to me because I thought if I felt as good as I did, the scale should have reflected that by showing a lower number.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this was the moment in my life where I realized it’s not about the number on the scale or the number on the tag. You can be the quickest, strongest, and most confident version of yourself, but the numbers will try to make you feel otherwise. Looking back, the number I saw that day was not even high..and was actually a healthier weight for my body than I had been at previously. Your gravitational pull to the earth is not an accurate reflection of your overall health and physical abilities.
I stopped weighing myself after this experience, because I realized how detrimental the scale was for my mental health. Like I said, prior to seeing the number on the scale, I was feeling great about myself and the hard work I had put in over the summer. It wasn’t fair to my body that I was letting a number trump all of the progress I had made. The job of a scale is simply to measure how much mass we have. It does not calculate for muscle, height, speed, etc. It’s almost as invaluable as BMI, but I won’t get into that right now. If we aren’t careful, the scale can hold an immense amount of power over us. Think about it, if you see the number that you were hoping for, you are typically in a better/more cheerful mood. When you see the opposite of what you were hoping for, the opposite feelings arise.
We owe it to ourselves to stop letting a number on a scale or a clothing tag determine our worth, or letting it determine the amount of confidence we get to have in a given day. I know I’m personally sick of these things robbing my happiness and confidence, and I have a feeling I’m not alone in that.
I still do not currently weigh myself, and I could not even guess how much I actually weigh. Part of me genuinely does not care what the number is, but the other part is fearful that knowing will cause me to fall back in the progress I have made over the years. I feel strong, confident, and happy in my current body, and I don’t want to put that in jeopardy and feel like I need to restrict or overexercise, simply to alter what I see on the scale. I understand that sometimes you have to be weighed, but you don’t always have to look at the number if you don’t want to. Thankfully, I never played for a coach who made a big deal about weight, but sadly I know not all athletes can say the same. Although you might have no control over how often you are weighed, or the comments you may hear, you can still choose the effect you let it have and how you respond.
It’s possible that your goal is actually to lose or gain weight, meaning that you can’t necessarily ditch the scale all together. It is perfectly fine to be working towards these goal, but I believe you can still go about it without allowing the scale to have total control over your life. Not everyone has the same goals, and some people do need to know their weight in order to see the progress they’re making. I’m not saying everyone has to throw out their scale and pretend it doesn’t exist, but it might be very beneficial for those who fear the thought of their life without it. If you are someone who weighs themselves frequently, maybe even daily, take small steps by just doing it a couple times a week. Eventually, it will begin to lose its power over you.