Brain Sprain

Many moons ago I had a tantrum and chucked out the bathroom scale. I was sick of its siren song that only led to a crappy mood for the rest of the day. (I wrote about it HERE.) I've gotten to where I don't even think about it most of the time and I have given zero thoughts to buying a new one. I like that my house is a scale-free zone.

Instead, I pay attention to how my clothes fit and how I feel in general...and lately my clothes have been getting a little looser and I feel like a superhero. I've been eating well and training hard, consistently. I'm starting to wonder about my weight, and though I live in a scale-free zone, I do not work in a scale-free zone..in fact right at this moment there's a state-of-the-art scale with bio electric impedance analysis four feet away from me, insidiously whispering "Hey! You're making progress! Don't you want to know what the numbers look like?" 

It would be really easy to hop on and find out how my body has changed.

This is bad, and here's why: I am afraid. I'm afraid that if I get on the scale my bubble will pop, because I know that I am still a long, long way from where I'd like to be. No amount of improvement will seem like enough...and the spiral staircase of shame and depression isn't that far away. These days it's behind me and I'm slowly walking away from it which feels amazing - SUCH a relief - but I know it's there and if I trip I might fall down again. My clumsiness has been known to put Jar Jar Binks to shame.

 Picture this: you've sprained your ankle. A few weeks or months have gone by and it feels pretty good. In fact, it's totally fine and there's no reason not to continue with life as usual. So you go for a walk one day, and you take a funky step (maybe on a root or an uneven sidewalk or you slip on some ice) and WHEEEOOO holy mother of )(&*@#$*(($*%& frip frappin ding DANG!
A few hours later you're sitting on your couch grumpily crunching down ibuprofen and icing your ankle which has somehow grown a set of donkey testicles again.

If you've ever had a physical injury, the rule is that you usually feel pretty good once you're healed 80% of the way...and that's where your risk of re-injury is at its highest, because you guessed it - you let your guard down. Depression is the same, although we don't tend to treat it that way: once you go down that road, your risk of relapsing is high until you've healed ALL THE WAY. Which takes a (sometimes surprisingly) long time.

So I'm not falling into that trap again. I like what's happening here too much to risk another trip into funkytown...and honestly the idea of seeing if I can get on the scale and remain objective wearies me. I'd much rather spend my energy monitoring the weight on the bar!