It all started so innocuously. I was just freshly home from the hospital after my hysterectomy, under strict orders to rest as much as possible and under no circumstances to get behind the wheel of a car until I no longer needed the Vicodin. So there was no way I'd be driving up to my HMO's healthy-lifestyle clinic to do my weekly weigh-ins, and so borrowing a home bathroom scale seemed to make perfect sense.
And when the presence of the scale tempted me into wanting to weigh myself more than once a week, well, that was a bit of a problem. But it did come in handy recently when I wanted to track what the hell was going on with my dehydration and water weight.
There was just one problem. I wasn't leaving it at just weighing myself a few times a week. Or even daily. Little by little, I found myself creeping back into the old dieting-insanity mindset of jumping on the scale several times a day. Just to see if my weight had changed because of that recent bout of exercise. Or that slightly heavier-than-usual meal. Or that bowel movement. Or sunspots. Or whatever. My old obsessive-compulsive scale behavior was back with a vengeance.
And along with it had crept back in a whole nest of crazee dieter's thinking. Yeah, I just slightly bent my food plan the other night--but look! My weight is down, so I "got away with it"! Or worse: look, my weight is down, so I can now "get away with" bending the food plan a little tonight! Or, damn! My weight crept up for no apparent reason, so maybe I'll skimp a little on my food plan for the next day or so. This way lies madness. I know it from past experience. Once dieter's mentality starts letting the number on the scale rule my brain, my behavior and thinking starts getting way the hell out of whack, until the inevitable finally happens and I start really fucking up the regimen.
The final straw was when, even though I knew the six pounds of water weight I put back on when I went off my blood pressure meds was weight I needed to put on, I could still feel a tiny corner of my brain bumming out. Instead of being within striking distance of 100 pounds lost, I now was set back several pounds--horrors! Or more accurately, horrors if I didn't nip this train of thought in the bud before it kicked me into a really stupid bout of the blues.
The scale is now put away. It's still in the apartment--in fact, it's still in the bathroom. It's just no longer right out there on the floor, where it was so easy to step onto after a shower or a shit. Sure, I could always take it back down again, but then I'd have to admit to myself that I am breaking my resolve to not use it.
The first couple of days after the scale banishment, It was fascinating, in a kind of unnerving way, to watch my obsessive-compulsive behavior tendencies flap around in the breeze. Every damn time I used the bathroom I caught myself getting ready to step on that no-longer-there scale. How quickly the old habits jump right back into place. Heh. It's like riding a bicycle--you never forget. It's mellowed out a little since then, but the pull to transgress is still there. If it keeps being this annoying, I'll track down the woman I borrowed the scale from and get that damn thing out of my house. But right now it's manageable, and kind of instructive, so I'm letting things be.
It's also instructive to watch my dieter's brain re-organize around scale-no-longer-present. Now, instead of obsessive thoughts about what I can "get away with" based on the magic number on the scale, Dieter Brain is re-realizing that the only remaining control it has over my weight is to stick scrupulously to the food plan. Voila--no more little rule-bending behaviors. Hey, if you can't erase the silly psychology, at least get it to work for you, I always say.
But it just goes to show me, how easy it is to start backsliding, even after all the huge amount of psychic energy and effort I've poured into this project, not to mention all the positive reinforcement I've gotten from compliance. Looks like eternal vigilance is the price I must pay for freedom from dieter's insanity. But hey! At least I caught myself before I had a chance to really screw myself over.
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