The Scale is My Friend, The Scale is My Enemy

An important part of my recovery, as I have spoken about in previous posts, is balance. I have tried to incorporate health into my life on a daily basis, while still juggling some of my many underlying obsessions. Possibly the greatest obsession I still have is with the scale. I have a love/hate relationship with this object, as I'm sure most women can relate to. Even though I find it a security blanket, my relationship with it can sometimes get over the top. I do not think that weighing yourself is necessarily unhealthy, but I think that it should be limited to once or twice a week in most cases. I struggle with this concept, realizing that I weigh myself numerous times daily, and that this is an unhealthy amount. This is probably the reason why many professionals have sought to 'get me off the scale'. My reason for continuing to weigh myself, against advice not to, is that it keeps me from repeating the eating disorder cycle. If I never weigh myself, I often feel out of control, unable to know whether what I am eating or doing is affecting my weight. This fear may be unfounded, but it is in fact one I face daily. If I were to go for a long time without weighing myself, only to find I had gained weight, I would truly struggle to keep myself from going on a severely restricted diet. So I find myself realizing that I must trust my body, in a way that my obsessions don't like me to. At this point I think weighing myself only once daily will be a goal I will try to obtain as a healthy start. As I have seen in the past, weening myself off of these compulsions helps to clear my head and help me see the big picture.