The Day I Went Postal on the Scale

The first installment in a series unraveling “my story…”  This process’ purpose is for reflection on past experiences in order to dig out the positive messages and lessons from the negative rubble…

Most 13 year old girls obsess about 13 year old boys, dreamy tweeny-bopper stars, the latest school bus gossip and what flavor Lip Smackers they bought at the store. As trivial as these fixations were, I would have given anything to have been stuck on the Justin Biebers of my day rather than what plagued me for years to come…

Wake up… get on the scale

Use the bathroom… get on the scale

Eat breakfast… get on the scale

Come home from school… get on the scale

Use the bathroom… get on the scale

Abstain from food and drink for hours… get on the scale…

An estimated 2.7% of girls between 13 and 18 years old suffer from eating disorders. -National Institude of Mental Health (NIMH)

From the age of 13, I became a statistic. How much I weighed and how little I ate were of utmost importance; I subconsciously grasped for a semblance of control somewhere… anywhere in my life.

My body image issues began early on and, although the core issues surpassed the superficiality of looks, I became obsessed with the number on the scale. I allowed a primitive piece of equipment rule my emotions and bar me from happiness, as the number never seemed to satisfy. If the number was too high, I failed; if it stayed the same, my efforts to bring the number down were useless; if it were lower than expected, it fed into the weight loss obsession- there was no winning situation. By day’s end, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have stepped on and off of that device of personal torture upwards towards twenty times. I was no longer a person- I was an object.

Fast forward to today…

I look back at the days where a literal tenth of a pound reduced me to tears.  Bringing home an A+ on a paper or receiving first chair as a 7th grade flutist in the 8th grade band held no importance;no matter what I had managed to accomplish in my day, nothing could define me more than that plastic measuring device.

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment that it happened, but a switch flipped within me, shedding light on the hopelessness of my attempts to let a needle on a wheel of numbers define my “goodness.” Although I still fought a long path to recovery after this moment, I thank my lucky stars to have relinquished the obsession with the scale when I had.

I don’t remember the last time I stepped on a scale. When I go to to the doctors’ for a checkup, I insist on facing away from the display and request the number not be shared with me. I don’t remember what the last reading said, nor do I remember the exact moment when I decided “never again!” I do, however, remember the ceremonial moment in which I took a hammer to the cheap “Health-o-Meter” scale, channeling every last frustration it has ever given as I bludgeoned it to smithereens. 

Now, as a personal trainer and a holistic health coach, I preach against the use of numbers to show progress. I favor measurements in terms of energy levels, mood stability and the fit of clothing (not the actual size). Due to erratic changes in water weight, the heaviness of muscle trumping that of fat, hormonal levels in the body, etc, I don’t see such a volatile number as a fair way to determine body composition or, on a deeper level, self-worth, at all. Scales are for fish, not for humans.

Constantly a work in progress, I have morphed my sense of self far away from what my weight is. The people I affect, the changes I create, the smiles I cause are all much more indicative of self-worth than any number would ever be able to tell. The day I destroyed my scale was not the day my battle ended, but it was absolutely a landmark moment in my life in which I refused to be defined by such a worthless measurement. Even though the illness falsely made me believe I had everything in perfect order, going ape on the rectangular white scale with the bold black and red numberswas the moment I reclaimed some actual control over my out-of-control, food/image/perfection driven life.

Out of My Own Way

Dizzy and seeing stars, I gasped for air, gulping it down, causing my stomach to churn, ebbing on nausea. I regained the slightest bit of composure, watched the timer count the last second of the interval and hopped back on to the speedily-rolling belt of the treadmill, grasping for any last bit of motivation I could to complete the high intensity interval training run I had set out to accomplish. With ten seconds left of my final uphill sprint, I wondered if I could finish. I contemplated cutting the last stretch short… “It’s only ten seconds less than what you had wanted to do. What’s the difference?”

Fueled by anger towards the fact that a voice of such negativity and dishonor even existed within me, I dashed out the last ten seconds and pushed myself to sprint another ten. I wasn’t punishing myself for toying with the idea of cheating myself out of my workout- a negative cannot and should not be corrected by another negative. Instead, the added sixth of a minute, although barely conquered with teeth ground shut, served to prove that my limits were not as limiting as I had thought.

Harder this time, I sucked in as much air as my lungs would allow, aware that I was “that person” in the gym with the audible working-out soundtrack blasting “Erika’s Inhale-Exhale” on repeat. Hidden in the pained wince of my face was also a subtle smile from the pride i felt for getting through it all.

As I dismounted from the treadmill, I felt a buzzing energy in my legsthat I could easily have mistaken for/settled to call fatigue. My aim was to push my abilities to high levels and my wobbly legs were proof that I had met that. Much like the positive pain I referred to in a previous post, the soreness in the muscles of my legs was welcomed and earned. To the uninvited negativity that nearly made me quit before I was ready to, I vow to raise my personal bar even higher, yet, partially as a mockery of the nay-saying voice… try and stop me now.

Uphill

The repetitive movement of running sets a perfect stage for meditative serenity. The steady tempo of foot-to-pavement strikes in cadence with the sound of air filling the lungs and circling out again. In this mental peace, thoughts come and go freely- an ideal environment to absorb any lessons being sent my way.

On a recent, particularly hilly run, the world presented me with teachings so pertinent to my disposition at the time that it was clear that life happens with purpose- it is not all random. About two miles through, I looked out in front of me to a stretch of road that seemed nearly vertical. I felt a flighty sense of panic as I momentarily considered the options of turning around or choosing a different path. I suddenly recognized this defeatist attitude as a reflection of habitually quitting when faced with seemingly large challenges. As the past has proven, failing to follow through when things get tough only presents me with pangs of regret and self-disappointment.What would my life be like had I not cowered when obstacles obscured my visions? How difficult would it really have been to tackle the proverbial mountains in my way?

If I chose to avoid that steep hill by turning around or choosing an alternative path, I would have compromised my deliberately planned route. I would have robbed myself of the inevitable sense of pride that would have come from following through with my original plan. The choice was obvious as I realized that, amongst distracting myself with reminiscing and lesson learning, I had been steadily making my way up the hill, anyways. With the simple motion of placing one foot in front of the other, focusing only on the next step immediately in front of me, the hill that seemed so intimidatingly impossible at first was disappearing behind me as I edged towards the top.

Before the next song even came on through my iPod, I had passed the peak of the hill, my hamstrings and calves enjoying the rewarding downhill slope that followed. How silly I felt to have even considered changing my path, all to avoid a (relatively small) uphill stretch of pavement. It was then I realized that the (only) way to take on, tackle and overcome any challenge is to take it one step at a time. Any hardship has the ability to be paralyzingly intimidating when looked at in its entirety; but breaking the daunting hill down and focusing only on what is manageable in the moment strips it of its debilitating powers, making anything seem 100% possible.