I don’t know what I weigh and I’m totally fine with that. I have an approximate figure in my head from when I last got weighed at the doctor’s, but even that doesn’t seem real to me. The doctor’s scales were in kilograms and where I’m from, no one ever talks about their weight in kilograms, so she might as well have told me my weight in Newtons, that’s how little kilograms mean to me. Even thinking back to that weight, I get the two numbers confused as to which way round they were on the scales, despite the fact that there’s about 30kg difference, so I really have no concept of weight and how much I weigh, which is great. I don’t have to lose that extra 10 pounds because I don’t even know for certain if I’ve got that extra 10 pounds.
I haven’t always been ignorant of my weight though. Back when I was a little kid, we used to have a pair of scales in the bathroom and my older brother and I would sometimes weigh ourselves. In a scenario that I imagine is the complete opposite to what occurs in many women’s bathrooms all over the globe, I was thrilled when I’d put weight on. I was getting bigger and more grown up, which is an important thing when you’re a kid. And who knew, one day I might catch up my older brother.
These scales broke around the time I was 7 and never got replaced. I just thought this was an oversight on the part of my parents who had more important things to do and better things to buy. Whilst this might have been the case for my dad, I found out when I was older that not buying scales was a conscious decision my mum had made.
Mum had at some point realised that her little 7 year old darling was going to turn into a teenage girl and she didn’t want me to be paranoid about my weight. We all put weight on during Christmas and our birthdays. If you don’t put weight on, then you’re not doing it right. My mum didn’t want me to worry about these temporary weight gains or to become obsessed with my weight, so she never replaced the scales.
And I can’t say I ever really missed those scales. In fact is, it was kind of great without them. The only point of reference for my weight during the whole of my teenage years was when I was 13 and we had to weigh ourselves for physics homework. Wouldn’t this be illegal nowadays? Instead, throughout my teenage years and now into my twenties I just rely on myself. We can all see with our eyes and the fit of our clothes when our body shape changes, which is fine as long as it doesn’t change too much, but there’s another tool that we can and should use.
As cheesy as this sounds guys (and man, this sounds so cheesy) we need to listen to what our bodies are telling us. Because my body will sometimes shout at me: “Grace, what the hell? I, the brain, know that you’ve only walked up two flights of stairs but your respiratory system seems to think you’re at the half way point of a marathon. Sort this out.” and so I know that I need to do something. It doesn’t matter what my weight is because health isn’t a number on a pair of scales and health isn’t even always proportions, health is not getting winded doing something ridiculously easy that a spry 90 year old grandma could do backwards in heels and so the answer to my health problems isn’t going to lie solely in a pair of scales.
I can’t tell you whether or not it’s hard to quit the scales because I’ve never had to. I’ve just grown up in an environment where it’s unusual to know your own weight, but I can tell you it feels good not knowing what you weigh. You don’t berate yourself for putting on or not taking off a certain amount of weight, but instead live in blissful ignorance of the numbers, using whether your body looks and feels healthy as your barometer.
So, unless you need those scales for reasons that are specific to your health, then just ditch them. Put them in a wardrobe, kick them under the bed, leave them in that bit of the garage where all the spiders live so you won’t be tempted to have a sneaky weigh-in. We get so hung up on reaching a certain weight that is often an arbitrary figure we’ve imposed on ourselves that we lose sight of the fact that the end result, being healthy, is the most important part in this equation, not the numbers that we’re putting into it.
You can read more from Grace Cox on her blog and follow her on Twitter.
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Thank you so much for writing this. I know approximately what I weigh, but all in all, I can tell my size from how tight (or loose) my clothes are. I try to stay healthy by exercising regularly, but I know if I really wanted to be healthy, I’d eat better (and therefore get smaller). I’ve had discussions with my mother about why or why not to weigh myself that go something like this:
Mom: “You should really weigh yourself one of these days.”
Me: “Why?”
Mom: “Because you should know what you weigh.”
Me: “I don’t want to know. Why should I have to?”
Mom: “Because most people like to know what they weigh!”
Me: “Well, I’m not most people and I don’t want to know!”
The numbers on a scale don’t mean anything. I know what size I am and where I fall on the healthy scale, but that has nothing to do with numbers. I don’t want to know what I weigh. I feel as long as I have a realistic view of my body and health, that’s all that matters.
As of late, all the focus on weight loss has really been irritating me. Not in a “I’m so fat, I need to lose a gazillion pounds” kind of a way, but in a “Just shut up about it already” way. My mom and grandma are always “I’m so fat, I need to lose weight” when they’re not really that big. They get lots of exercise and eat somewhat healthy, but they’re both older, so they’re going to have that extra no matter what. I’m overweight. Not huge, but definitely overweight. And yet, I feel alright. I exercise, I eat fairly healthy most of the time, and as long as I don’t look at myself in the mirror when I’m mostly naked, I’m happy with myself. And I think that’s what matters. I’ll never be a stick figure; it’s just not in my genetics. And maybe I could stand to lose a few pounds, but right now, I’m okay with where I am, and it’d be really nice if I could read a magazine or watch tv and not be told I need to lose weight and they know exactly how I should do it.
I haven’t weighed myself in about six years. I used to obsess over how much I weighed and now I feel so much better about myself.without doing it, that I will never go back. I can still be a little overly obsessed about the way I look, but now I have one less thing to make me worry about it.
I read that your weight isn’t an accurate measurement of progress when you are dieting, or in general. So i finally decided to focus on how I feel and how my physical ability has improved through exercise, as well as clothes, to determine if i’m going in the right direction. And now i haven’t weighed myself in almost a year! And I don’t plan on it anytime soon.
This is such a great post, I may have to print it out (Definitely Pinning it) and keep it next to my scale to remind myself not to freak out if the numbers arent where they should be yet. I may not be ready to ditch the scales yet, but I will definitely stop weighing in as much. Thank you!
About a year ago, I moved apartments, and among the things that went into storage was my scale. I had never had a particularly unhealthy relationship with my weight but having the scale there made it sorely tempting to get obsessive about normal fluctuations in my weight. So away it went, and I feel all the better for not measuring my health by my weight. Bless your mother for having the forethought not replace the bathroom scales when you were a child! Thanks for this beautiful piece.
I threw my scales out a couple of months ago when we moved house. Previous to that they were stuck in my wardrobe somewhere under other piles of stuff so I ignored them. I was obsessive about my weight and it was unhealthy because I was never happy with what the number was no matter how low it was. Since I’ve ditched them and don’t have a concrete number I just go by my clothes. Mentally it does me a lot more good and as long as I fit into my favourite clothes it’s all good right?