Goodbye Scale!

Goodbye Scale!

Photo courtesy to www.freedigitalphotos.net

Photo courtesy to www.freedigitalphotos.net

Dear Scale, I’m done with you!  I’m finished!  You no longer get to tell me who you think I am or how well I am doing.  You do NOT define me!  You are not my friend anymore. Goodbye!  Sincerely, Christina

This is overdue.  I meant to write this weeks ago.

It’s Sunday night, July 13, 2014.  We had a glorious weekend with BEAUTIFUL weather!  We live in Southeast Alaska.  It rains a lot here.  We get 14-feet of precipitation a year.  Yes, you read that right, 14 FEET!  Our temperatures this weekend were in the upper 70’s.  That is warm for us.  It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!

Last night, I had this idea that I would weigh myself this morning.  About a month ago, I removed the scale from my bathroom and put it in this storage space we have below our house, which is in a room above our cistern.  (Because of all the rain we get, we collect the rain water into our cistern tanks, which is then filtered, and that’s the water we use for drinking and bathing).  The room above the cistern is like an above ground crawl space.  That’s where the scale lived for a few weeks…until last night when I got that [evil] thing out.  Some of you may be wondering if I prayed about this: NOPE!  I was full-throttle on-a-mission and I think the Lord was like, “Okay, have your way.  You shall see…”

Mirror, mirror…who is the most beautiful of all?  Well, let’s just say it’s, “Scale, scale, tell me, am I beautiful?  Have I been good?  Am I too much?  Or not enough?”

I thought, “I’ve been doing really well (I’ve been good).  I’m following my boundaries pretty consistently.  God is changing me and transforming me.  Let’s see the proof in the puddin’!”

I woke up.  I got out of bed.  I went (yeah, you know what I mean, let’s empty everything so no ounce counts against us).  I put my 8-pound weight on the scale just to be sure it’s accurate (oh boy!).  I stepped on the scale.

I gained 2 pounds!  TWO pounds!  GAINED!

Wait!  This can’t be right.

Step off the scale.

Let’s try that 8-pound weight again.

Ready.  Let’s try this again.

Step up.

Still a 2-pound gain.  Sigh.

Now remember, it’s a beautiful day.  But the majority of my day was spent in with this cloud hanging over me, all because of a number.  A number.  Two measly pounds.  I let it define me.  I let it steal my joy.  I let it steal my whole day.  I was grumpy.  I set the mood for my home and my husband was affected, and so was my daughter.  I was in a stinkin’, rotten mood all because of a contraption that spits out a number.

Really?  I’m going to let it have that much leverage?

I’m DONE with it!

I am NOT what I weigh.  I am defined by Jesus Christ.

So hours later, which really should have been right away, I sat down and renewed my mind using the Dumb Scale Eating questions from I Deserve a Donut app (there’s also the book) by Barb Raveling.  That helped, but I still had a bad attitude.  So then a little while later, I renewed my mind with the Discontentment questions from the same app.  One of the questions asks what God wants me to do, and right away He showed me that I needed to apologize to my family for having such a bad attitude.  And so I did, and they forgave me (along with hugs and kisses).

I’ve never walked away from the scale feeling better.  Even if I had a weight loss, I still felt discontentment rising up in me.  It will never be enough.  It’s a tool the enemy has used in my life to make me feel like the scum of the earth.  Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but really, I have allowed it to define me.  I am not my weight.  I am more than a number!

So this is what I’m going to do.  I’m going to ask my husband to hide the scale and I’m going to ask him to not let me have it back–ever!  (Unless the Lord clearly gives me the “ok” to weigh).  Really, I’m so done with it!  We actually have a use for the scale for weighing our luggage when leaving town since Alaska Airlines doesn’t really like a bag to be over 50-pounds (sometimes we are just tired of the rain and we would rather see snow or sun, you know?).  We aren’t light packers, what can I say?  So…he’s going to hide it and I’m going to be done with it.

Will you join me in this?  Will you get rid of or ask a family member to hide the scale?  Or wean yourself off the number-spitting contraption?  Maybe instead of every day, how about once a week?  And then once a month, and then every 3 months?  And then never?  The number isn’t important.  You are important!

This is a scripture that was included with the Discontentment questions from I Deserve a Donut.  It really spoke to me:

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being RENEWED day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Cor. 4:16-18

I don’t want to look at what is seen (the scale).  I want to believe by faith that God is doing a work in me.  Because He is transforming me, from the inside out.  One of the questions asked in the Dumb Scale Eating questions is: Is it more important to lose weight, or to consistently renew your mind so you change the way you think about food?

Well, obviously it’s more important to consistently renew my mind.  Because I have chosen to renew my mind and because God has transformed me (and continues to do so), I have seen some amazing changes take place.  I no longer think about food like I used to.  I used to lust after hunger (being at 0), but now sometimes when I’m hungry, I feel like it’s an inconvenience because I’m working on a project or spending time with my family.  I’m no longer fearful about food (I used to think that sugar and carbs were doing deathly damage to my body).  I eat smaller portions at restaurants (this is a new change).  I don’t like feeling full, which for me is a “6”, where before, I used to numb myself with food.  I no longer immediately think about eating after my kids are in bed (that is a HUGE transformation change–praise God!).  And by following my boundaries, I was able to stay at a very healthy weight during my pregnancy.  So WHY would I let a number make me feel like a failure?  No way!  I’m not doing that anymore!

I don’t know why I gained 2 pounds.  But I’m not going to spend my time focusing on why.  I’m just going to continue doing what I am doing: following my boundaries and most importantly renewing my mind.  Taking the time to renew my mind about this got my attention today.  God exposed the lies and revealed truth.  The lie: you are what you weigh.  The truth: the scale doesn’t define me; Christ defines me.

So would you join me on this quest to say goodbye to the scale?  Let’s do it!

P.S. About 1-1/2 weeks after I weighed myself, I was able to tighten my belt one more notch.  Praise God!  So obviously something is happening.  A new thing is happening!  God is doing work from the inside out!

“Weighing In” – How A Naturally Thin Eater Thinks About the Scale & Eating

My Sister, Andrea, Breezy (notice his tongue), and me!

My Sister, Andrea, Breezy (notice his tongue), and me!

Another post about the scale? 🙂 Yes. It seems to be something we need encouragement about!

In 2001, I had the joy of getting to be the collaborator with the Hallidays on the writing of the Thin Within book. Something that not many people know is that, in writing the book, I got to share stories from my own life throughout. (Don’t tell anyone!)

So the part about the Naturally Thin Eater at the top of page 136 was about my sister, Andrea. We changed the names of those whose testimonies we included, so I am “Teri.” 🙂

A Thin Within participant, Teri, tells of her sister’s eating habits: “She always eats small amounts, making a huge deal out of each bite, moving the food around in her mouth. I never could understand it before. Also, she is quite happy taking a single bite of someone else’s chocolate mousse pie instead of ordering her own. She eats strange things at odd hours. She always leaves food on her plate. It seems like she never eats much of anything at a sitting, but you can tell she really enjoys whatever she eats. When I asked her about when she likes to eat, she looked at me like I had a third eyeball and stated, ‘When I’m hungry.’ She’s been living and using the Keys to Conscious Eating all her life. I wish she had clued me in.” Thin Within, p. 136

That section of the book was written 13 years ago. Andrea visited last week and I had the chance to learn a bit more about her eating habits. We went out to a wonderful dinner and she ate what seemed to me like an enormous quantity of food given my prior claims. 🙂 I never noticed her do that before. I didn’t say anything of course. 🙂 The next day, we were talking about a dinner out with her friends one night. They expressed incredulity that she could eat such a big meal and not be larger than she is. She pointed out that she doesn’t eat that way all the time. An “occasional” meal where she eats that much is followed by eating the modest portions she almost always does. It doesn’t lead to another meal large meal, and another and another. And it also doesn’t lead to condemnation. She has found a rhythm in her life that works well for her to be a healthy size.

I shared with Andrea that the most popular post *ever* on my blog was last week’s post: Your Body – What is Your Natural God-Given Size?  I told her that I think people are eager to be convinced that getting rid of the scale is a good idea and that life won’t fall apart if we do it. She shared with me that now, at age 62, she has never had a bathroom scale her entire adult life.  Whenever she has had an occasion to see her weight (annual physical exams), she has been the same weight since she was sixteen years old. She gets on the scale and, PRESTO! there it is again…the same number that the scale has told her for 46 years! Without doing anything differently. (She sheepishly mentioned that, even with a regular Yoga session, she finds the weight has “redistributed,” but she is still the same number on the doctor’s scale.)

She eats when she is hungry. She typically doesn’t eat when she isn’t hungry–or, if she does, it is a bite (literally…one tiny taste) of this or that. Occasionally, she enjoys a large meal and then gets back to eating modest portions again after that. That’s it. No strangle-hold on her scale or on calorie counting or some other approach. She is free.

Note: She doesn’t know Jesus. I would love for her to know that freedom. Could you  pray for her real quick just now?

Have you experienced freedom from the bathroom scale and discovered that you are approaching or found your natural God-given size and maintained it? How did you deal with the doubts and questions of “Shouldn’t I be weighing?”