So…a couple of weeks into Lent I was still wondering what to give up. I know that I’m supposed to give up something on Ash Wednesday, but I take this giving up stuff seriously. I didn’t want to give up something goofy like eating chocolate(which I don’t do anyway)….or something that is really good for me(like naps with the poodle). So I was just meandering along thinking something would come.
And, of course, it did.
I was raised to be a scale lunatic. Weight issues and eating disorders run rampant through my family. I can quote, chapter and verse, celebrity news about dieting that I read decades ago(no joke). For instance, when I was maybe 11, there was a great magazine called “Teen.” I read it all the time. There was a newprint section in the center which, I recall, had pithy little articles and tidbits. There was one article about a singer named Karen Carpenter who had recently become a star. This article didn’t talk about her sweet voice or cool drumming. No, this article related how once Karen felt she was fat and had to take off 21 pounds. As I remember, she said that she just didn’t eat until she lost that weight. (My recollection may be fuzzy, so I apologize if I have it wrong…but I don’t think so.) I don’t recall there being editorial applause, but there was the implicit message that she had SELF-DISCIPLINE. She became an idol for me, and one that I could not measure up to. I just couldn’t starve (Thank you God for whatever native sanity you placed in my soul…because the external environment would have had me lauded for the skinny product self-deprivation would have produced.).
No, the eating disorder genie passed right over me. But it left in its wake a person who hated herself for every pound that remained on her body and tried every means to rid herself of it. While I didn’t starve or barf, I tried every diet, diet aid(hah!), and hateful trick under the sun. I was actually told once that I had to become disgusted with myself to get the discipline to get my weight down! Right…weight down….get the numbers down….which brings us to…..
The Scale….
I have never been without a scale. In my family it is the essential item for the new home. We all know we don’t like the scale. It makes us cry. But still I would get on often and chart where I was in life by what number shone in the little window. In fact, a couple of years ago, I decided to take off some weight through being healthier and the scale was an aid. Lately though, I jumped off the sanity boat. I have been obsessed with losing the 6-8 pounds I put back on. It consumed so much of me. I never thought something so small could loom so large. I had taken to weighing my body every day, thinking that I would be inspired to be more…yeah…DISCIPLINED…if I saw those numbers. Also, I thought it would be so encouraging to watch them go down. As my weight creeped up I took to weighing myself two, three, and then four times a day. I would try to calculate how much I could eat to still lose some weight or how far in advance I could start cutting back to enjoy a dinner out. It was just so sad and depressing but I did it…..
…until that couple of weeks into Lent when I realized that all I was succeeding in doing was deluding myself into thinking that I was able to control my weight , if not so many other things in my life right now. So I decided to give up the scale for Lent. I gave my husband the battery with the instruction to return it on Easter. And so it went. And during this time something incredible happened.
I felt my body. I became conscious of how I felt when I ate. I looked at my body. A couple of times I danced around the bedroom naked singing about how I loved my body….that I’m cute, dammit! (Not that the world needs to hear all this information…although maybe it does…). I touched and really felt my hipbones and ribs. I touched my stomach and didn’t recoil…and I didn’t know what the numbers were.
So today, the day before Easter, I decided to weigh myself. I pulled the scale out from under the bed thinking I would try to find another battery. I pressed on it and those little zeros came on(unbeknownst to me, my husband has been weighing himself. I must talk to him about this self-defeating behavior). I pulled the scale over and stripped(I know, TMI). Before I got on the scale, I actually felt a shudder within, a strain from stress. Anyway I got on the scale and…………
I was three or four pounds lighter! And actually that’s just the body weight….everything else….I think a ton lifted off me! Was I happy that I was lighter? Well, YEAH! A poster child for rational thought and sanity I will never be. But I realized that the scale is really unimportant to daily life for me. A wise person recently told me that I have to stop trying to control and just live. In one little part of my life I did that, and I gained so much. So I thank you, scale, for being my Moriarty . I’ll see you again in a month.