My Journey Back to the Scale

March 19th, 2022

7:00 AM

It’s crazy how much can change in four months…

Four months ago I started this journey with fixing my relationship with my self-image and food, and it has been quite the journey indeed.

When I first started out, I completely stopped weighing myself. I completely stopped even looking at myself in the mirror. I chose to ignore my body completely and just tried to live life and eat what I wanted.

Of course, in the beginning, what I wanted was all the foods I never let myself eat prior. And then, over time, I slowly drew back to just wanting to feel healthy and feel good so I choose foods that made me feel just that.

I started realizing that while I could have desserts and “bad” food whenever I wanted, that I didn’t actually WANT that. It got to the point where I was naturally drawn to basic, clean food again.

Me in the Mirror

With my change in attitude towards food, I also changed my image perspective. At the suggestion of my boyfriend, I started looking at myself naked every morning and forcing myself to COMPLIMENT myself.

Words hold power. So every morning, to this day, I stand in front of the mirror and compliment myself for things that aren’t physical.

It usually goes something like, “I am strong. I am smart. I am beautiful. I am loved.” (Has anyone see or read ‘The Help’?).

“I am strong. I am smart. I am beautiful. I am loved.”

And every time I say, “I am loved.”, I smile. Every time. Because that is what matters most- the fact that I have people in this life who love me no matter what my body fat percentage I am.

Three Weeks Ago

I decided that it was time to see where I was at calorie-wise. Remember, that part of this journey was to increase my metabolism so to know that, I had to see how many calories I was eating on average.

I also started noticing that my body wasn’t changing any more. In fact, I think I look about the same as I have the last month. This means that I was most-likely eating at maintenance.

So to know what my new maintenance was, I decided to start logging my food again. For two weeks, I added my food to MyFitnessPal at the end of the day.

Why the end of the day? Because I didn’t want the numbers to affect my food choices throughout the day.

Of course, I would eat meals out and not be able to track or log them, but that was maybe once or twice a week. I was still able to figure out that on average, I was consuming about 2,000 calories.

2,000 calories are a big deal to me. Before, my maintenance would have been around 1,500 calories easy.

Before, my maintenance would have been around 1,500 calories easy.

One Week Ago

Since finding out that my maintenance did increase, I decided that I was ready to get in a small deficit again and just trim some of this excess body fat I gained so that I could be confident and comfortable this summer.

This wasn’t an easy decision. I had to consider a few factors:

1. Was I mentally ready to start tracking and weighing again?

2. Did I WANT to eat less than I was?

3. How am I going to do this without risking going back to my previous extreme behaviors?

After much praying, talking, and consideration, I realized that I was, in fact, ready. I knew that this cut wasn’t because I hated myself like before, but because I loved myself. I know that how I look now isn’t bad, but that it’s something that I don’t feel is truly me.

So I made a game plan.

First things first, I had to start weighing myself again...

The Scale

This is where I’d like to point a few things about body weight and the scale. They are like the stock market; they go up and they go down, but it’s the trend overtime that matters.

We are all more than what that number on the scale tells us; God loves us for who we are and how we love Him, not for how much we weigh.

So after thinking about it, I decided I was ready to weigh myself again.

Not going to lie, I was really scared...but not of what number I was going to see.

No, I was more scared that it would cause me to freak out, to force me to go back to my old ways, and cause me to go back to hating what I see. I was scared it would remove all the progress that I made.

Before I stepped on the scale, I gave myself a pep-talk-- The scale DOES NOT define me. It doesn’t define my character, my heart, my soul, or who I truly am as a person.

And then I stepped on the scale...

And I weighed more than I ever have in my life.

I couldn’t believe it.

But it wasn’t in the, “I weigh THAT much?!?”, sense. It was more of, I weigh that much and look this GOOD?!

It was more of, I weigh that much and look this GOOD?!

Because that’s the thing- I look good! I don’t mind how I look! And I weigh that much! It was revolutionary to me.

I always thought I had to be 30 pounds or less lighter to ever truly feel good about myself and yet here I am weighing what I weigh and feeling the best I’ve ever felt.

So what does this mean??

This is the exciting part. This means that I get to weigh heavier, eat more, and love who I am inside and out.

I never have to force myself down to a bodyweight that I’m not meant to be at again.

What a sincerely, massive relief.

I had to get uncomfortable to be comfortable with myself.

In a Deficit

So now that I knew what I weighed, I had to figure out how I wanted to do this cut. I didn’t want to go extreme because I want to make this new weight loss a loss for life. This cut had to be sustainable.

I decided to lower my calories to 1800 average for the week, but I would track 1700 calories only during the week. So this past week, Monday thru Friday, I tracked 1700 calories, but this weekend, I’m not tracking at all.

Here’s how I broke down the math:

If I want my total daily calorie intake to be 1800, that’s 12,600 calories for the whole week. For five of those days, I eat 1700 calories, which equals out to be 8,500 calories. This leaves me 4,100 calories for the remaining two days (Saturday and Sunday), or 2,050 calories per day.

From my previous two weeks of tracking what I ate each day, I know that there is a very large chance that I won’t go over 2,000 calories a day. I just naturally don’t eat that much any more.

And that’s exciting to me. Because I can still enjoy my life on the weekends, still have dates, etc., and not completely change my life.

The Goal

Because this is the goal. The goal is, once again, to do this forever. To be sustainable, long term, for the rest of my life.

This is my first week so not too much to report. I feel super good at the gym still and I feel excited to be walking/moving more, and I can see my body is responding.

My weight lowered by two pounds the first two days, but has stayed the same the rest of the week. I’m not stressing about it, though. The weight is just one tool of measurement and so I’m going to continue with these calories for another week and go from there.

If my weight continues to stay the same next week, I’ll lower my calories to 1600 for those 5 tracked days and then reassess.

The beautiful thing is that because this is a long term, lifetime thing, I have a long time to get where I want to be.

So here’s to becoming the healthiest version both physically, mentally, and spiritually…

Here’s to health. Cheers.