Scale Phobia
A lot of weight-obsessed people, of which I am apparently (and reluctantly) one, weigh themselves every day or even multiple times a day. I used to work out with this one chick who would weigh herself before and after our workouts. As if that hour and effort had made a difference in her overall weight.
I obsess in a different way. I am absolutely positively scale-phobic. It has to take a huge force of will for me to get on the scale under any circumstances. At home I very rarely get on it. I absolutely refuse to stand on it in front of Calvin - a fact that he teases me mercilessly about. He even stands on it first in a sort of, "See? It doesn't hurt!" At the doctor's office, I stare off into the distance rather than look at the scale results. And the funny thing is, the med assistants at our doc's are aware of this, and they just smile and note the weight in their chart and don't say it out loud.
I don't know when this scale phobia started - it didn't always used to be this way. I used to stand on the scale with ease, in front of people or alone, note the weight with either dismay or encouragement, and go on with my day. Now, I can't do it at all without something akin to a panic attack.
I think it's just that I don't want to know. If I'm "feeling skinny", I don't want to stand on the scale and have it say to me, "Oh, girlie, you were SO WRONG. You big fat pig." If I'm "feeling fat", I sure as HELL don't want to stand on the scale and have that confirmed, even if the possibility exists that the result could be better than I expected.
I just pay attention to how I'm feeling, how my clothes fit, and how I look in the mirror. I'd like to say that it's because I'm all strong woman hear me roar flaunt the societal standards and fuck numbers anyway. But really it's because I'm a big ol' chicken. And numbers do matter to me, even though I don't want them to.
So I do what any reasonable woman would do. I ignore them. Pretend they don't exist. Hope they melt away on their own without me babysitting them.
Yeah, right.
I obsess in a different way. I am absolutely positively scale-phobic. It has to take a huge force of will for me to get on the scale under any circumstances. At home I very rarely get on it. I absolutely refuse to stand on it in front of Calvin - a fact that he teases me mercilessly about. He even stands on it first in a sort of, "See? It doesn't hurt!" At the doctor's office, I stare off into the distance rather than look at the scale results. And the funny thing is, the med assistants at our doc's are aware of this, and they just smile and note the weight in their chart and don't say it out loud.
I don't know when this scale phobia started - it didn't always used to be this way. I used to stand on the scale with ease, in front of people or alone, note the weight with either dismay or encouragement, and go on with my day. Now, I can't do it at all without something akin to a panic attack.
I think it's just that I don't want to know. If I'm "feeling skinny", I don't want to stand on the scale and have it say to me, "Oh, girlie, you were SO WRONG. You big fat pig." If I'm "feeling fat", I sure as HELL don't want to stand on the scale and have that confirmed, even if the possibility exists that the result could be better than I expected.
I just pay attention to how I'm feeling, how my clothes fit, and how I look in the mirror. I'd like to say that it's because I'm all strong woman hear me roar flaunt the societal standards and fuck numbers anyway. But really it's because I'm a big ol' chicken. And numbers do matter to me, even though I don't want them to.
So I do what any reasonable woman would do. I ignore them. Pretend they don't exist. Hope they melt away on their own without me babysitting them.
Yeah, right.
Labels: headspace
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