Why I No Longer Have A Scale In My Office

To Scale Or Not To Scale

When I first opened my private practice I knew one thing had to change – there would no longer be a scale in my office.

There are two schools of thought on this issue and for a long time I thought that weighing yourself on a regular basis was a good way to keep you "honest" and "on track" because, let's be real, sometimes we put more food into our mouths in the run of a day than we think we do.

We hear it all of the time “the scale doesn’t lie”… but I began to think – it does lie. It lies because A) SO many things impact the number on the scale that are not related to the food we consume or the exercise we engaged in and B) it does not measure all of the amazing things we did for ourselves and for our health.

For some people (and I commend you – I do not fit into this camp) stepping on the scale and seeing a number looking back at you elicits no emotional response. It is simply a number – a data point – that is forgotten about the moment you leave the room. For others, this number is sitting in your mind for the rest of the day. Every time you put something into your mouth, every time you make a conscious food choice, you think of that number.

I would have clients come into my office and they would talk about how proud they are of themselves that they were consistent with a goal they had for the week. Then they would step on the scale and it might be the same, or MAYBE it even went UP! What the heck!?! *&#%@&$

“I worked SO hard this week. I worked out and EVERYTHING”

The next 5 minutes is a conversation consisting of reminding my client about the things they were so proud of themselves for just moments before and listing all of the things that can make that number on the scale go up that are NOT related to food at all:

1. A salty meal yesterday (which after self experimentation I will tell you it causes a temporary increase of 2-3 pounds the following day)
2. Constipation (what goes in, must come out)
3. Muscle soreness

And this is just a few – there is so much more that changes that number and those little things, and the resulting inflation of the number on the scale can have such a HUGE impact on our mood throughout the day.

After thinking about this more and more, I began asking my clients how they would feel if they reached all of the goals they verbalized (one of them typically being “feeling awesome in my clothes”) but the number on the scale didn’t change. I got some interesting responses. Usually a pause, some contemplation and most of the time they would tell me that it wouldn’t really matter.

So if we could reach our goals separate from the number on the scale… why will we continue to monitor the number?

The reason we monitor that number is because it gives us a concrete way of saying “good” or “bad” (I try not to use this verbiage) and that we are either moving closer or further away from our goals.

But we KNOW that this is not the case. We know that you can change your body composition drastically without a huge change in the number on the scale.

Scale Manipulation 

People would admittedly do things on the day they would come to see me that did not reflect a healthy way of living – skipping meals, restricting water, etc. This was all in hopes of seeing the number on the scale go down.

After experiencing this time and time again, I decided that it was finally time…. I had to ditch the scale for GOOD!

Monitoring Progress

So you might be wondering… if there is no scale how do you know if what you’re suggesting is actually working?

My number one focus with clients is how they feel – their mood, energy levels, digestion, sleep, etc. These are the areas we look at first. And let’s be honest… when our weight changes, we feel it! We can feel it in our clothes regardless of what the number on the scale says!

So why do we need that little tool to measure our progress if we can feel it in SO many different ways… the answer is, we don’t! I give you full permission to BREAK UP WITH YOUR SCALE! Break up with it forever – it serves you no purpose. It cannot define you, it cannot give you an accurate reflection of your eating habits, it cannot tell you whether or not you’re getting closer to your goal, it cannot BE your goal.

Take some time and decide whether or not your scale is contributing positively to your life. Even if your goal is to lose “that last 10 pounds”… you don’t need the scale to tell you when you’ve gotten there.

What do you think? Does your scale positively contribute to your life? Please leave your comments or questions below.

Yours in Health,

Kristin