Your Scale is a Liar

The shoes add at least 93.5 pounds.

Today, I am here to admit that I am a recovering scale junky.  Yes, I was totally addicted to my bathroom scale.  And when I say I addicted, I mean it in every sense of the word.  While many women (and men as well) are somewhat obsessed with the numbers on that little dial, I couldn't make a trip to the bathroom without stepping on that little box.  My house, a friend's house, a random houseparty house; if there was a scale to be found I was on it.  I was also compulsively beating myself up over the numbers that flashed up at me.

Smart enough to know that my dependency on the scale was far from healthy, I still late it control my life as I started to become more in tune with myself and leading a healthy lifestyle.  Initially, the numbers started dropping because going from little physical activity and horrid eating to lots of physical activity and clean eating had a nearly immediate effect on my body fat.  I was losing weight, the numbers were going down and I was elated.

But eventually that stopped happening.  Soon the numbers stalled and at a certain point they even started going up again.  I was getting fat again!  Only I wasn't getting fat at all.  The mirror said I was fit.  So did my smaller, better fitting clothes.  And most of all, so did all the other measurements that didn't include stepping on a scale, holding my breath and crossing my fingers.  But that bitch was in my head.

Here's the thing, and know we've all heard it, muscle weighs more than fat.  Well, that's not entirely true.  A pound of fat and a pound of muscle both weigh a pound, but a pound of muscle is more dense meaning it takes up less space.  It's like looking at a pound of apples versus a pound of marshmallows; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you which takes up less space even though the weight is the same.  I was trading marshmallows for hard a shit apples.

And while I knew that my body composition was changing dramatically, I was still a slave to the scale. Kicking myself over pounds and ounces.  I knew I needed to get off the scale, but I couldn't do it alone.  So I sternly requested my boyfriend hide the scale; I couldn't do it alone.

It made all the difference.  But then one day I stepped on the scale at the gym, after not doing so for many months, and saw "fat Sauce" numbers staring back at me.  I freaked.  I cried.  I called my boyfriend who calmly sat through twenty minutes of tear-filled venting.  "Try again tomorrow," he finally said.  So I did...

My weight fluctuated 7.5 pounds between 8:00 pm and 8:00 am the next day.  7 POINT DAMN 5.

Yup, in twelve hours that's how much my weight changed.  I chalk it up to two gallons of water, a day full of meals and being all my feet all day.  Regardless of the reasons, what I really took away from that experience was the realization that the scale is lying, totally inconsiderate bitch.  And one I won't be trusting anymore.

Lets talk numbers:

• At my heaviest, pre-fit weight I was nearly 170lbs
• ...However most of the time I hovered around 160 and 23% bodyfat
• Currently I am about 160lbs and 14% bodyfat
• Contest day I am usually just under 150lbs and 9-10% bodyfat
• And (perhaps most telling) most people guess I weigh between 130-140lbs

All of that, especially the last part, tells me that the scale is perhaps the least important indication of progress.  Instead of pounds I'll be relying on inches, how my clothes fit, photographs and most importantly how my body FEELS.  You don't wear your weight scribbled across your forehead so who gives a shit?  I know I don't anymore.  Hell, I even posted my weight here on the freakin' Internet.  And that, my friends, is where it shall stay.

Liberate yourself and get off the scale with me!