Imagine, sitting in a room where no one speaks to one another. You wait your turn as one-by-one each person is taken into the back. They call your name and you think to yourself, “Oh No! I’m next!”
As you walk into the back, you have this sinking feeling that some horrible news will be revealed to you. You try to comfort yourself, remembering that everyone experiences anxiety at the doctor’s office.
As you reach your destination the nurse turns on a machine and turns around and stares at you. You think to yourself, “This is it.” This is the news you’ve been dreading all day, week, month. The nurse says, “Are you ready?” You say, “Yes.” (Even though you’re not.) Next you hear the dreaded words…
“Can you please step on the scale?”
If your experience every time you go to the doctor is like this then your relationship with the scale is frightening.
I’ve always hated going to the doctor, not because I feared him but because I feared the scale. Who would have thought that a machine that states three digits would frighten me for the rest of my life?
It can be terrifying knowing your weight, especially if you’ve been on the dieting rollercoaster. Even if you feel good about your eating and activity patterns, there’s that quiet voice that whispers that it may not be enough.
As you become an intuitive eater, it’s normal to doubt whether you really can trust your body to tell you when to eat and how much to eat. What if I was all wrong and what I thought my stomach was experiencing as hunger, was actually something else?
Whatever your reason for fearing the scale, it’s fine to fight back.
A dinky piece of metal should never have that kind of power over us.
We don’t have to let it ruin our lives. When did we become so fascinated with that silly little number, anyways?
We can blame social-media, television, or magazines that always promote the new diet the stars are on to lose 50 pounds. We can blame a parent or a relative for making comments about weight as a child. We can blame the nurse or doctor for having the scale there in the office in the first place.
While it’s helpful to understand where our body-bashing thoughts come from, dwelling in the blame game does little to help us move forward to embracing and accepting our unique and amazing bodies.
Dan Navarro, FitU Nutrition and Exercise Mentor, was a former music major and is currently pursuing a degree in dietetics. He is in his last semester at Chico State and is working on becoming a dietitian, certified diabetes educator and physician’s assistant. Dan enjoys participating in Spartan races and playing piano, guitar, and drums.
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