Scale Away

Why truth might not be in the numbers

I mentioned in my first post that one of the first things I did that changed my understanding and perception of health and fatness was detaching myself from the scale. Therefore, I thought I might start with why and how I decided to stop weighing myself and using it as an indicator to confirm if I was, losing the weight.

Let me start from the age of 12--I think I was 12 when I went to Canadian Tire to purchase a scale. I hid the scale under my bed because my mom is very anti-scale, largely due to my father’s dogmatic belief in the necessity of daily weigh-ins--not for just himself, but my siblings as well. I only uncovered this information later in life, but at the time, I did not understand why we didn’t have a bathroom scale after my parents separated, like most other homes did. This confusion was further amplified by the fact that I was a fat girl who often overheard muffled conversations and received repeated comments from family members and friends about my shockingly inappropriate body size and fatness, before I even approached adolescence.

Wish I could slice off some of that fat on you and give it to Lucy

A family member said to me about my thin friend. What is interesting is how, at 12 years old, words can mark us permanently. Unlike broken bones, which with appropriate care can heal within 6-12 months—a single word can become a lifelong sever to the skin that can forever impact our consciousness, behaviors, and too, how we navigate through the world. With the accumulation of words and conversations about my weight, it was clear that my fatness was the problem, and it was up to me to figure out how to get rid of it. Going into the world as a fat girl was the direction that I was choosing, and it wasn’t the right one.

So, of course, it was up to me to correct this. Truthfully, at twelve it was hard to wrap my head around the idea that it was so bad to have more body fat, than less. I began to take notice of magazines like Women’s World, where women were on the cover, standing in one leg of their oversized jeans and holding up the waistband with the other arm, showcasing their dramatic weight loss. Often paired with a statement like, How I Lost 80 lb. in 8 Months! I noticed myself gravitating towards these types of magazines at friends’ houses and began to read about how one can gather the resources necessary to make cabbage soup, or as my sister recommended—a low-carb diet, which for me consisted of cheese and hotdogs (this was ineffective). Then there were times when I would try to simply just eat healthier by cutting out fries, cookies, chips, and take-out. But seeing my friends enjoy these foods made me feel further excluded from others than I already did. During my weight-loss attempts, I would hope to see my success reflected in the number on the scale going down. However, the scale I purchased was cheap, so when I didn’t see the number drop—of course it was the scale that was the issue, because according to these magazines, Weight loss is EASY. The myriad and mixture of dieting methods I tried, in order to see the number on the scale go from 220 lb. to 130 lb. made no sense to me. Nothing I tried seemed to work. And too, it seemed like a long way to go.

In trying to explain my difficulty losing weight to my peers, I often had things said to me like; You just have big bones. It’s your native background. You don’t have to lose all the weight—just some of it.

I remember my sister grabbing her index finger and thumb to measure across my tibia bone— ”You have big bones, Nikita.”

Am I supposed to be happy that I’m a girl with big bones? Naw, I want the frail and dainty bones that the models and celebrities have. Also, I clearly wasn’t going to go get a bone density scan to justify my fatness. I am also not native. I hold no status, nor do I have family traditions, languages, or stories that have been passed down. My question was, How much weight loss would qualify as enough to be accepted? Let’s throw this all at a 12-year-old to consider.

So, then what did I do? I opted for some restrictive methods. At age 15, upon entering high school, I tried another dieting approach. This approach involved a 30-minute run at six in the morning before school. And for breakfast: One litre of water. Lunch: One litre of water. After school: One can of Cambell’s Tomato soup with lemon pepper and an english muffin with a heavy amount of peanut butter. Supper: Water. And yes! 60 lb. down! Minor comments about how I was hot, pretty, and anorexic, traveled around school. Didn’t matter though, because I was finally being seen—for achieving something and for becoming something—because I guess I wasn’t before?

I did liberalize this diet on weekends, but I also noticed myself questioning how the hell I was going to maintain this type of eating regimen throughout my lifetime. And too, the weight loss eventually stopped, or plateaued. I remember being 160 lb. and a size 8 in pants and wondering how I could possibly restrict more than I already was to become a 130 lb. or size 6 pant.

The diet began to drain me. I kept noticing how I would dip in and out of it, and slowly I saw the number on the scale go back up—dammit. At this point, I was using my friend’s scale since the scale that I purchased a while back was determined to be faulty. Right before I left for college, I was back at 200 lb.

I was determined to leave my hometown and do something in a city where no one knew me or had predetermined my fate as a fat girl who had no future. It’s assumed that when you can’t control your weight or what you eat, that you’re not smart either—because a smart person would know the right foods to eat and how much to eat, and when to stop eating (Gordon, 2023). I felt like my weight was my biggest barrier, and until that was fixed, I couldn’t achieve anything else. I thought fixing my weight, would fix my grades, my future, and technically all of the problems I was facing at that time, like not having a boyfriend. Also, I really just wanted to blend in and be liked. So, caring about my grades and figuring out how to apply myself academically could not be my priority.

However, there was art. Art was my outlet, escape, release, and something that brought me peace and happiness. I could create something that was different from who I was, and something that was beautiful. Drawing and painting for me released both the light and the dark (very evident in some pieces). Art allowed me to think, draw, and create my alternative world—and hey, I wasn’t bad at it. That I held some sort of talent as a fat girl slowly became evident to me through the portfolio I submitted to media and design college. When I found out I was accepted, I remember running up and down the hallway, jumping for joy. Design school was my route to escape, and a way to become something, or someone else.

To be in a new city with a fresh start and having more control over what I consumed as a young adult—I thought, here is where I need to focus on losing weight and become who I really want to be. Looking back, I’m disheartened that this was my focus at that time. And too, I do not think I fully understood who I wanted to be.

Now that I was in college and away from cabinets of Lay’s chips and Chapman’s Ice Cream, I was back to reconfiguring how to try to lose weight. Before I was dropped off at college, I remember my mom saying, Just don’t gain more weight. But I don’t feel that was the message being sent to me.

Interestingly, what I did learn in my first year of college being all alone, is that social isolation from friends and family did not help with weight loss—not in my case. Hello comfort food. I was lonely. I missed friends and family and felt so far away from home. The only way I could manage to push through my loneliness was to focus on the real reason I came to Ottawa, which was school, not weight loss. Through this experience, I did come to value my friends and family as treasures in my life rather than seeing them as obstacles preventing my weight loss.

In my second year, I became a little more comfortable with myself and my surroundings. I made a few friends, but still no dramatic weight loss. I did choose to invest in a gym membership, because still, health and movement mattered to me. It was during this time that I remember at one point shifting my thinking to, Let’s forget about weight, and just focus on health. Yup, I still continued to weigh myself at the gym after an hour of jogging, and still seeing little to no success on the scale. But then I thought, Why?

Detaching from the scale isn’t exactly easy when you’ve been geared to rely on it for at least 10 years. But why, I thought, am I getting on the scale to see if I lost weight, despite knowing that I’m making micro-shifts in my everyday actions and routines that move me to being a better and healthier version of myself?

As much as the books, articles, and magazines endorse the validity and reliability of using a scale for weight loss, the scale wasn’t telling me if I was healthier. For me, what happened was, sometimes I would weigh myself, and the scale would be down after eating some fries and a milkshake. Then I would put in a hard effort to eat healthy and exercise and see the number on the scale go up. Either way, I came to realize that using a scale on a daily or weekly basis was not going to make me healthier, it was telling me if I could feel okay about myself that day—and I hated that. If anything, I felt as if the scale derailed me and became an unhealthy obsession the more I engaged with it.

So, how was I going to step away from it—after my workouts, after feeling good, or after having weekends filled with sugary treats and take-out? This was how I remembered it: I would see the scale each time I left the gym in the women’s locker room right beside the exit door. I would feel a sense of guilt ride over me—it’s almost as if the scale knew I was trying to ignore it. It was truly an embodied and uncomfortable feeling to disassociate from what I was always told to do; weigh myself. Bypassing the scale after workouts felt like I was trying to avoid a person every time I left the gym—my pace walking out the door picked up, and I would see it there in the corner of my eye. Learning to pull myself away from the scale and shifting my focus to healthy habits I could see myself maintaining became easier. I then noticed how my clothes began to feel loose.

I started relying more on the physical and mental changes. I’m not sure how much weight I lost, and I’m not sure specifically why this time had been effective, except for the fact that I reoriented my thinking and approach. Looking back, I think some of the reasons why the scale was not a good indicator for improving my health and ambition to lose weight are likely due to the following;

1. I was expecting the needle on the scale to decline in a linear motion—anytime I achieved weight loss and then experienced a 1-3 lb. gain--I took as a personal insult and attack. I would then self-sabotage any healthy habits I began establishing with a “F-it” mentality and ate whatever I wanted, which only made me feel worse. I would later reflect that perhaps I was progressing, but was too focused on validating factors—such as the number on the scale.

2. Water retention, hormones, and stress can impact total body weight. Obsessing about 1-3 lb. gain on the scale was a useless worry. Yes, I wanted to be healthy, but the negative self-talk and stress of not steadily decreasing 1-2 lb./week as most recommended, did not help. If anything, it made health more confusing and consumed my thoughts.

3. I was working out, which increases muscle mass. I should be able to use alternative indicators, such as how my mind and body feel and how my clothes fit.

4. Going up or down a couple of pounds didn’t indicate much in relation to trying to obtain a healthy mind and body, or significant weight loss. If I lost 30 lb. and gained back 5. That’s okay. I learned that throughout all the changes we endure in life that my body will fluctuate in weight and change in shape. I will not, and do not expect my body to weigh the same throughout all my life stages.

5. I’m not going to be, and will never be 130 lb. Perhaps I do have bigger bones or more muscle mass. Reading women’s body statistics in magazines over and over made me feel like 115-130 lb. was the acceptable standard. I would look online for different BMI calculators over and over again and kept punching in numbers that would categorize me within the normal BMI range. One hundred and thirty pounds was out of reach for me, and still is. I got over the numbers, and they slowly began to mean nothing to me.

For women with weight goals who come to me, confused and disheartened by the lag of the scale not shifting in the direction they had hoped, I would sometimes say; If you had your dream body—if you felt confident, sexy, wearing your bikini or whatever, but stepped on the scale and it said 200 lb. would you care? Probably not. So, get over it. The scale won’t get you to the best you.

These predetermined numbers of what an appropriate weight is, is fabricated—a cultural, political, and societal perspective or standard based on old data and lies (Aphramor, 2010). I think we should set the standards we have for ourselves. Each individual is unique—a unique physical structure, background, and field of energy. No need to fit yourself in someone else’s box. You make you, you.

Lastly, the scale isn’t really going to tell you much. I feel like it’s a type of friend. But not a good friend. Just a friend, whom you might sometimes avoid. You might talk to them every once and a while, share some small talk. But it’s not someone you’re going to phone every day for advice, or share a deep, insightful conversation with. But a basic friend, maybe kept best at a distance. The scale will only tell you the weight of your body at that time and moment in your life. It isn’t

a predictor, nor an indicator of health, or a marked number that identifies who you are as an individual.

There are times later in life when I did dabble with the scale again, but overall, it’s never helped me achieve anything significant. I do understand however, that some have faith built into the scale and they love it. It’s a scientific measure and a trusted resource for them. I’m not here to say that weighing oneself is useless and meaningless, but, for some—like myself, it wasn’t the best.

This is my perspective and how I remember my past. However, I am open to feedback, discussions, others’ experiences and insights. Please do not hesitate to connect with me or comment on this piece.

Thank you kindly,

Nikita Rose

References:

Aphramor, L. Validity of claims made in weight management research: a narrative review of dietetic articles. Nutr J 9, 30 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-9-30

Gordon, A. (2023). "You just need to lose weight": and 19 other myths about fat people. Beacon Press.