Does the number on the scale matter?



Whether you are skinny or fat, watching the number on the scale go up and down has a tendency in youth to define your personal worth. It's both self imposed and socially engrained our our minds. Well, for girls and women anyway.  These insecurities tend to follow us into adulthood too. The inner struggle never vocalized but so many battle.

Much of what I write about is getting a handle on food and losing weight but I really do think it is important to touch on weight defining you as a person.  So many people place value on the number on the scale and nothing else. I'm Guilty! For a long time I did define myself by my weight, I was overweight/fat and I just accepted it for what it was. I knew my friends and family loved me for who I was on the inside so, I gave up on the outside. When I was in high school I decided that I wasn't ever going to be beautiful because I carried around more weight than any of my friends, I was always the heaviest one in my group.  Now when I look back at those photos I want to yell at the 16 year old me and ask her why she didn't work harder to just stay that way. It's funny because I'm working back to that now!

I let my warped identity allow me to eat whatever I wanted, gave me an excuse to not go to the gym and made it really easy to give up when "diets" were not working for me. In my mind, I was the fattest I could be so, there was no need to change. Wrong, I was so very wrong. I never really took the time to care about how much extra weight I gained. I couldn't pack too much more on could I?  I just lost track, mainly because I just stopped weighing myself consistently almost a decade ago.

Sure, medically speaking I genetically have an incredibly slow metabolism.  I also know that on both sides of my family, people carry around extra weight.  These are things that I could use as a crutch time and time again.  Reality was that once I put it on, I just didn't think I had it in me to lose the weight. Being overweight had just become part of my identity.  I lost weight for my wedding which was great, I was so proud of myself but then got lazy and put it all back on plus some more.

What inspired this was something I said last night.  I asked my husband, "Why didn't you tell me that it had gotten that bad?" and he didn't really say anything other than in his mind it hadn't.  Reality is, I gained all 43lbs in the period of time we were together. Did he forget what I looked like when we started dating? Probably not.  Then after sleeping on it, it occurred to me that it was because he values more than just what I look like. He values me as a person.  I was the one who wasn't valuing who I was, and I was the one hurting my body and spirit.

Even though I'm losing weight, it doesn't fix the mental gap. I still feel the same way I did 26lbs ago and to a certain extent, don't see the huge change so many people see when they haven't seen me for awhile.  Everyday I try to not define how far I've come by how many pounds I've lost.  Even though that's important I've also changed my eating habits, I'm likely in the best shape of my life and mentally I am in much better spirits - all of these things are equally important.   The first question I always get is "Why are you doing this?" and I can now honestly say why.

I am changing my body and my mind. I am paving a new path for my future and I am going to learn for the first time in my life to love myself for who I am.  No longer will I only love half of myself, I will love my whole self completely.

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