I Sold My Soul
to the Bathroom Scale:
by Kaye Bailey, Published August 15, 2005, You Have Arrived
August 4, 2005: Today I am wearing J-Lo denim jeans, a pretty peach colored lace top and high heeled sandals. I should be standing a mile tall on top of the world because this is exactly the reason I had my body cut open, my stomach and intestines disassembled and rearranged. This is exactly why I gave up every comfort I had ever found in food – this is what I traded my gluttony and sloth for, this is what I wanted when I went under the knife for gastric bypass surgery.
But I am not celebrating today because I know that I am still fat.
How do I know this?
Because the scale told me so.
Today I weigh 1.5 pounds more than yesterday. In spite of my 4-mile fitness walk last night, in spite of following the rules completely yesterday I gained weight. Therefore I am fat. It matters not that these little, once coveted, clothes fit perfectly. The thin woman looking back from the mirror is an illusion and my husband told a lie when he said I look great today. I know the truth because the scale doesn’t lie.
Today I am fat. And I will feel fat all day because the scale controls my mood. The scale controls my mood because I’ve allowed that number to be the tangible measure of my self-worth. If the number is low I am loveable and worthy. If the number is high I am fat and loathsome.
Popular diet wisdom says don’t weigh yourself but once a week. The logic is weight fluctuations due to changing glucose reserves (water retention) will show on daily weigh-ins, but over a week’s time these so-called minor fluctuations will not be apparent. I understand and comprehend this logic. And I ignore it. I sold my soul to the bathroom scale the day I left the hospital from having gastric bypass surgery.
Prior to surgery I circumvented the scale avoiding it all cost. In fact, when I first applied for surgery I had no idea what the real number was, but I was confident the 185-pounds recorded on my current driver’s license was a bit of an understatement. Yes, a 90-pound understatement! In fact, I was so afraid of the scale more than once I cancelled medical checkups for fear they’d make me step on the tell-all beast.
That all changed after surgery. It didn’t matter how gross the number was that day the next day it would be lower. And again, lower the next. I became obsessed with the scale charting my descent to the land of the happy and the thin. Soon I had a "before work" weight, "after work" weight, "after workout" weight and "after dinner" weight and finally a "bedtime" weight. Yes – I measured my weight five times a day. I was obsessed. This was fine at first when the pounds were melting away like snow on a warm spring day. It was so encouraging and empowering to be losing weight! Glory be! This weight loss surgery was working – my miracle was coming true.
The bathroom scale is a false god cruelly parsimonious in dispensing pleasure. The initial short-lived euphoria from validated weight loss is most always followed by a "crash" – a plateau or worse, weight gain. The crash involves anxiety, depression, irritability, extreme fatigue and possibly paranoia and self-effacing behavior. What have I done wrong? How have I screwed this up? I knew this wouldn’t work for me.
I crashed when I hit my first plateau after losing some 70 pounds. The scale refused to budge and the more it refused to budge the more enslaved to it’s power I became. With each new measure it set my mood, my tone and fueled my anger. I was depressed, irritable and even paranoid. How could I possibly not be losing weight? My insanity was so wrought with emotion and self-loathing drastic action had to be taken – I begged my husband to hide the scale – to kill the monster! And he did. And then I begged him to give it back to me, I needed to worship my false god and have it validate my worthiness or loathsomeness on the day. Without it to define me, who might I be?
According to Mireille Guiliano in "French Women Don’t Get Fat " a bathroom scale is not commonly found in the French household. Moreover, French women are attentive to the way they look and feel rather than enslave themselves to the number on the scale. I am trying, honestly trying, to adopt this behavior and make it my own. It is of sound logic and rational good sense, particularly in the weight maintenance phase following massive weight loss.
Yet today, some five years later having maintained my weight in the "safe range" on the scale, I stepped to the alter of my false god, and that cruel deity told I am still fat. I sold my soul to the bathroom scale.
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