Weight... A Measurement of Our Value?

---

Client: "I want to lose 20 lbs.  I'm too heavy."
Me: "Ok, I hear and I honor your weight loss goal.  How often do you weigh yourself?"
Client: "Every day.  I need to know what I weigh, and if I am gaining or losing!"
Me: "How do you feel when you weigh yourself?"
Client: "I feel awful.  If I've gained even a pound from one day to the next I have a horrible day.  
Even if I see that I've lost a few pounds, it's never enough."
Me: "As we start this journey together, I would like you to try something new and different.  
I would like for you to put away your scale for a while."

Weight (definition): a body's relative mass or the quantity of matter contained by it, giving rise to a downward force; the heaviness of a person or thing.

Scale (definition): an instrument or machine for weighing

We are quite attached to weight and the scale...  I hear about weight all of the time... from clients, friends, family members and the world at large.  As a society, we believe that our weight has a direct correlation to our worth.  We have arrived at a place in time, where we calculate our value based on the numeric value on our scale.  

When did this happen?  How did this happen?  Platform scales were invented around 1830, and started to pop up at country fairs after the Civil War where a carney would attempt to guess your weight.  At this time, weighing oneself was frivolous entertainment, not a daily requirement.

By the 1930s, we started to see ads for the “Health-O-Meter” and to increase sales, marketers began their agenda trying to make daily weighing an obligation… see below picture... "Health, beauty, success and happiness all depend on your weight!"  And so it began.

​In 1943 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company published the first “ideal weight” tables and required people to register their weight to get insurance. Weight was on the road to being “medicalized.” Without the bathroom scale becoming a fixture in most homes – there couldn’t be a diet industry.  ​
As scales invaded bathrooms nationwide, “obligation” evolved into obsession. 

• $20 Billion - The annual revenue of the U.S. weight-loss industry, including diet books, diet drugs and weight-loss surgeries.
• 108 Million - The number of people on diets in the United States. Dieters typically make four to five attempts per year.​

• 85 Percent - The percentage of customers consuming weight-loss products and services who are female.​
• $500,000 to $3 Million - The average salaries paid to celebrity endorsers of major weight-loss programs.

(Sources: 2012 MarketData; National Weight Control Registry; American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery; Jo Piazza, author of "Celebrity Inc.: How Famous People Make Money.")

Fact:  On any given day, our weight can fluctuate up or down by up to 4 lbs due to sleep, fluid and sodium levels, activity level, stress and hormones!  If this is the case, then weighing ourselves every day isn't even an accurate representation of our bodyweight! 
​
Let's take our power back.  Shall we?!  You are not a number on a scale.  You are a powerful spiritual being, that that gets to live in this amazing body...  This amazing body that allows you to experience all that life and the world has to offer you.  

You cannot grow and thrive and evolve as you were meant to, if you are focused on the weight of your body, from a place of self-criticism and denial as you wait for the day that the scale tells you... "You're okay".  

Do we really want to give that mechanical instrument that much power over how we feel about ourselves?!  When we fixate on arbitrary digits on a scale, instead of the incredible unique gifts that we have to share with the world, we minimize our worth and value and the worth and value of those around us. 

I encourage us all to remove the judgement we have allowed to be placed on ourselves, derived from a plastic and glass device.  Let's put our scales away and start to focus on what's important...  

How do you feel in your body?  
How is the health of your body?  
Does your body support you in doing the things you want to do with your days?    

These are the more relevant questions that lead us to the information we need to know to have the life and health and body we want to have.  When we can remove the scale as the focal point of our happiness, we make room for a new, happier and healthier experience!
 
​
xoxo,
Margaret