Weighing In

I bought a bathroom scale a few months ago. I used to hate being weighed. As a chubby adolescent, I was forced to step on my family's bathroom scale in our living room with all my family watching how far the scale tipped. My mom would be surprised that a twelve year old weighed that much (apparently, the fact that I was just a touch shy of six feet tall didn't matter) and would tell me that I needed to diet.

Now, having grown out of the pained adolescent stage, I am no longer on the verge of tears when I step on my bathroom scale. I bought it to see how more fit and less fat I was becoming. I had an idea of what I weighed and where I wanted to be in terms of pounds, but didn't have any real way of measuring it. At first, I was nervous that weighing myself would feel like punishment, that I would feel guilty and embarassed at how much I weighed. But as I've seen improvements, stepping on that scale motivates me and makes me feel accountable to something, even if it is an inch-think square of metal with a digital display.

I've gotten into the habit of weighing myself almost every day and always right after I shower and dry my hair in the mornings (I think wet hair will throw off the reading). I don't think I'm obsessing about my weight, rather, that I want to make sure I'm sticking to my goals and need a way to measure that objectively. Sure, I can see that my pants are hanging a little lower and that I'm starting to notice a tiny bicep form, but that scale gives me a number, something that I can log and remember and compare. And, I understand that even though that number may change from one day to the next, it's not necessarily because I've gotten fatter by three pounds over the course of one day but that weight fluctuates from hour to hour, based on how much I've eaten, when I ate, how much water I've drank, and number of other factors.

This morning when I got on that scale, it read 163.8, the lowest it's been since I started weighing myself. I'm getting closer to reaching my Body Mass Index goal of 21 (for someone my height of 5'11" the matching weight is 150 pounds). But, I'm still a long way away from my half-marathon goal. I'm getting there though, slowly but surely.