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Experts agree that weighing yourself regularly [3] can help keep your weight in check and inspire you to stay on track with workouts and healthy eating. But when stepping on the scale becomes an obsession, that's when it can be detrimental to your journey — and even to your well-being.
Carina [4] recently posted this before-and-after to her Instagram page [5] with this caption about scales: "There was a stage where I needed to throw them out! I spent years staring at that number thinking it meant something — how beautiful, desirable, valuable, popular I was. I was 'more' of those things if the number was getting smaller. I was less of them and had less value if the number got bigger 😢."
I think women can relate completely to this relationship with the scale. Carina added, "I used it to measure my worth. I would tell myself 'If I can just get under 60kg, all these good things will happen. I will be better.'" Sound familiar?
There is nothing wrong with having a goal weight in mind to motivate your healthy lifestyle, but if you obsess over that number and let what the scale says dictate your mood for the day, then the scale needs to be thrown out! There are many other ways to monitor your progress in a positive way — take monthly progress pics [7] or celebrate how much weight you can squat.
Carina shares that on her weight-loss journey, "It has taken me a long time to realize that it's just a number and that number has zero bearing on how good or happy your life is." Your emotional issues won't magically disappear just because you see a specific number flashing back at you. It's important to love yourself at all stages of your journey and recognize that what you weigh only tells one part of your journey.
She adds, "That number doesn't tell you how kind you are, how intelligent or funny you are, how strong you are or how much you mean to your loved ones. It has no connection to your worth. So please don't give it that power."