BLOG: Why scales are banned in my house.

By MIA FREEDMAN

More women fear weighing themselves than getting dumped by their partner. I read this in a survey so it must be true.

And if it is true, it’s sad, isn’t it?

I don’t weigh myself. Stopped years ago. Got rid of the scales at home. Well – I hid them in the back of my bathroom cupboard. But who was I hiding them from……? Well, my kids for sure. I don’t want my daughter – or my sons – to place too much (cough) weight on the numbers on a scale.

I’m not suggesting a total head-in-the-sand approach to weight. I want my children to be healthy and to have bodies that let them run and jump and give them pleasure and allow them to feel comfortable in their own skin. But numbers on a scale don’t tell the whole story and it’s so easy to become fixated on those numbers. It’s like dress sizes.

The other day my eldest son (who was packing to go on a fishing trip with his uncle) came into my bathroom looking for the scales. He found them at the back of the cupboard and I triumphantly intercepted him just in time as he took them back to his room.

“Wait!” I demanded, holding up my flat palm like a traffic cop. “Bring those back. You don’t need them.”

He rolled his eyes and kept walking, calling over his shoulder “Mum, it’s to weigh my LUGGAGE because we’re going on a small plane and I can only take 7kg. You’re nuts.”

Oh. OK then.

I’m not suggesting that weighing yourself is in itself necessarily a bad thing if you are particularly overweight and trying to shift kilos. I get how you might want to track your progress.

But the women in the survey who would rather be dumped than face that number on the scales after Christmas (gah) would seem to have a very emotional relationship with weighing themselves. They sound like they’re hostages to their scales.

I think being aware of your body, looking at yourself naked in a full length mirror and making sure your wardrobe doesn’t ONLY contain elastic waistbands are all effective indicators of weight – without making you a slave to a number.

If you weigh yourself and it helps you, I’d love to hear about how you use your scales.

Do you have scales in your house? How often do you weigh yourself?