Dee belonged to a diet program that had weekly check-ins.
At noon every Wednesday, she faithfully went to her group meeting and stepped on the scale.
Because she was always determined to see the lowest weight number possible, she told me she had developed a list of rituals for her weigh-in day.
They included:
• No eating or drinking before weigh-in, no matter what time my meeting was.
• Wear lightweight summer clothes year-round. (No heavy outfits!)
• Make sure to put on my lightest underwear.
• Leave off extra jewelry, such as my watch.
• Wear thin socks or none at all.
• Eat very light meals and maybe even no dinner the day before.
• Leave my pedometer in my purse. (Who knows how heavy those are!)
• That morning, pee and pee (and hope to go No. 2) prior to my weigh-in.
Over time, Dee’s rituals only made her more obsessive about her scale numbers. And she never wanted to admit she was seeking an extreme, unrealistic readout.
Even worse, because of the way she ate on all the other days of the week, Dee’s weight rarely changed.
When you play games with your scale, it’s easy to use the number as an excuse for going off your program.
“Obviously, my diet isn’t working, so screw it. I’ll show that stupid scale it can’t do that to me. I’m just going to have fun and eat whatever I feel like.”
How destructive! Beating yourself up because of a simple math number is completely illogical. It’s like saying, “It’s raining today, so it must be my fault. I’ll show the stupid rain! I’ll skip my exercise and overeat.”
Excerpted from Chapters 7 and 8 in Friends with the Scale