Nope. None of these 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.
Mia Freedman
“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?
Comments
119 Comments so far
I wrote a blog post on exactly this. I have a love / hate relationship with the scales and there are strong arguments for and against. Weighers tend to have more stable weights and there have been many studies on this.
http://alycevayleauthor.com/2013/02/26/to-weigh-every-day-or-not-my-lovehate-relationship-with-the-scale/
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I think it really depends on your own relationship with food and weight.
Scales are actually good for me. They keep me grounded. If I feel like I have eaten too much, for example, and am beating myself up about it, checking my weight usually helps me to realise that it hasn’t made much difference at all. Conversely, if I’ve picked up some bad habits and not realised, scales helps me to keep myself in check. It also spurs me on when I need to lose some weight and I watched the kilos fly away.
I started weighing myself daily when I read that is what French women do and I have found that it really helps.
But that’s just me. Each to their own!
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I also decided over two years ago, to never stand on the scales ever again. After growing up as thin as a whip, after the birth of my third child my body decided that it was about time that I had a nice comfy layer of fat surrounding it, so it was a shock for me to admit that I needed to go “on a diet”. But I realised that doing this and regularly standing on those scales, tormented me to such a point that I constantly thought about what I was eating and what my current weight was and I was convinced even though I was slowly losing weight, that I wasnt losing them on the scales.
So now I dont bother. I eat healthy and exercise on a regular basis and I can tell by my boobs if I’m dropping some weight.
It’s stress-free to be scale-free!!!
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I have 3 daughters and they tip both ends of the healthy range scale. I am of healthy weight but have been overweight. Having spent too much time imparting eating/health information to my girls I now live with their own eating issues…..personaltites, genes, lifestyle, choices…. and then social media distorts all even more. My girls are BEAUTIFUL ‘just the way they are’. They have hearts of gold, are socially conscious,possess strong work ethic, grit and determination and will make their mark. Scales are not important, they are. If I only have a few more years, months, weeks with them in my home, I will remind them why they are so loved by people around them, and scales will not be menitoned in that discussion. And ultimately I know they will choose to live their lives as healthily as possible.
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We have scales in our house. My 3 year old is fairly underweight and we check his weight weekly. Am I a terrible mother for having an underweight child AND scales in the house???
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Hi there Mia,
I have put together a blog on why I have chosen to weigh myself daily – almost a response to this post.
Feel free to have a read! http://thesecretdiaryofafoodaddict.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/why-i-weigh-myself-daily/
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Hi Esscee
I could have written your blog posts. I definitely need scales to keep me in check
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Happy to say we don’t own any. Haven’t regularly weighed myself since Iived with mum and dad 15 years ago! Looking in the mirror and how I feel tells me what I need to know.
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My wife bought me some scales for Valentine’s Day (of all “festive” days to give scales) but as I suggested last night to her, they are really for her not me as she is the one on the big weight loss/health kick program and I am coming along for the ride.
Weight is one thing people try to shift, but it shouldn’t be weight that is focused on, rather the amount of fat they are carrying.
At my heaviest (and I am 6 foot tall) I weighed 105kgs in 2006. I went on a big weight loss (let’s call it trim down) program and went down to 78kgs but it was the reduction of the 40″ waist to the 32″ waist that was most impressive.
You can’t get that from a set of scales; only the size of the clothes you are buying.
And back to that heaviest weight of 105kgs. Brad Fittler, at his peak in his football career weighed 108kg and is shorter than me but no one would call him fat. He had muscle (and I imagine still does).
Yes, check the weight for checking your progress, but don’t make it the be all, end all. As long as you can fit into the size you want to fit into and you look good, that’s all that matters.
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As you have rightly pointed out Mia, this body image thing affects boys just as much as girls. With boys, there’s the added pressure of being “buff” and having enviable biceps. I’m noticing this more & more with the young men in my office. All of them are going to the gym to work on their arms & abs & some are taking supplements (like jack3d) as well as protein shakes. It’s the equivalent to a girl wanting to be skinny & have big boobs. Maybe AFL/NRL/rugby is to blame. Maybe music festivals are to blame where all the guys wear singlets. But then I suppose you’ve got musicians & boybands like One Direction, which aren’t as bulky. Maybe sex hormones are to blame!
I think the answer is in part: self-esteem, not “needing” to be liked, and having an appreciation for different body shapes. Eg. I think that some skinny blokes are very stylish & sexy with the right clothes & hair!
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I have three girls and one boy 16,13,10 and nine…I made a decision when I had my first child to never have scales in the house. I didn’t want my children to weigh themselves and use weight as a measure of health. My kids are all active, eat well and are healthy. Weight is something that is part of our family conversation. Health is something we discuss and I think I have pretty balanced kids when it comes to body image. The only times I have been weighed in the last 16 years is when I’ve had check ups during pregnancy.
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I weigh myself every day. It’s a good measurement for me of what works and doesn’t work in terms of my exercise and diet. I immediately see the results of eating or drinking excessively and can take action on it. Similarly, I see the results of eating well and exercising well and get to enjoy it. I don’t beat myself up about the number, I just see it as a way of measuring what I’m up to in life.
The good thing about weighing myself every day is how intimately I know what those numbers mean for my body – 58kg is too skinny for my taste, but a great running weight. 62kg is not too bad for running, and looks great naked. 65kg is my husband’s favourite! I have been as low as 56kg and as high as 80kg in the past (actually higher when pregnant), but I prefer where I sit now, so rather than wait to feel my clothes get tight or see myself look gaunt, I can just weigh in.
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I haven’t lived in a house with scales since I left home to go to uni almost 20yrs ago and I’d never buy them now that I have a child. I don’t even think I could guess my weight within 10 pounds because I never ask the number when I’ve needed to be weighed in a doctor’s office or whatever. Muscle weighs more than fat so that bloody number isn’t an accurate measure of what one’s body composition actually is at that moment anyway. That’s why I’ve never understood how shows like the Biggest Loser or those weight loss programs work. A person could have built muscle or be dropping water weight. Scales are a rort.
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My partner has scales though I have rarely used them. I’m definitely more in the ‘measure myself by how my clothes fit’ camp. That said, I am getting married next month and have been on them a bit more – mostly because I need to hold steady so my dress fits well, rather than slips off my shoulders!
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Ex-disordered eater here. This has made me realise that I weigh myself everytime I am naked. Every.single.time. Clearly a habit that has stuck. I have tried putting them away but then without even realising it I am back on them again. A lot like how some smokers lights a cigarette without even thinking about/realising it. I guess it’s an addiction. As they say, you never really recover from an eating disorder, you just go into remission.
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When I first started working out and trying to lose weight, I’d regularly weigh myself and celebrate if the number got lower. Then I realised that because I was losing fat but putting on muscle, my weight wasn’t changing despite seeing the changes on my body. I now use a measuring tape instead of scales!
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Great topic. No scales in my house but I’ll occasionally weigh myself elsewhere. Neither of my teenage daughters seem to have missed them.
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It’s funny, I’ve actively avoided weighing myself in sheer fear of how much weight I’d gained.
Before the last time I weighed myself, I was 49kgs… when I hopped on the scales a week or so ago, I was convinced I weighed at least 58kgs….. Turns out I weighed 51kgs.
Anxious over nothing. So contrary to this article, I now weigh myself because the truth is kinder than my mind.
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I have scales in the bathroom. Haven’t been on them for at least a month. I think people who are likely to obsess about their weight are going to do it with or without scales. For me, they are useful every now and again.
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I bought my first set of scales last year. My weight rarely fluctuates by more than a kg or two but as I am progressing into my forties the weight has redistributed to my tummy area. I bought them once I noticed my jeans were tighter around the belly as I thought I was getting heavier but it’s more to do with loosing it from my face and gaining it on my tummy!
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We do not have scales in our house. I only ever get weighed when I’m about to give blood and even then I appreciate it when the kind blood bank employees don’t tell me that number (although I do like it when they let me know I’ve lost weight since last time).
I’m bigger than what I want to be, and probably by more than the 5kg I think I am. But I exercise hard and try to eat well – I don’t need the pressure of a number staring me in the face everyday.
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have never owned scales – didnt see the need. i judge myself on if my clothes fit.
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I don’t really trust our home scales anymore as I have discovered that if you weigh yourself then get off, reset and go again it always comes up lighter the second time, and this continues as many times as you reset and re-weigh yourself. I once lost 3kg in increments of about 200-300g just by resetting and re-weighing!!
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With an active eating disorder I am still unable to throw my scales away – even though I know my self worth shouldn’t be dependent on a number on a dial – very hard habit to quit.
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I don’t own scales. Instead I weigh myself once a week on the gym scales. It means I don’t obsess during the week and I use one consistent scales where I have to go to the gym to use them. As I’m genuinely interested in tracking my weight since I’ve lost quite a bit in the last 6 months, it’s also a good motivation to go to the gym.
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I don’t weight myself, but I do closely monitor my weight via clothing fit, eating habits (I can tell when they change i.e. eating more/less).
I think it’s okay to monitor your weight, in fact more people should given the phenomenal obesity epidemic. As long as it is not obsessive.
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I have never been one to weigh myself.
In my 30’s I was very happy with my body so had no need to.
I then fell pregnant and had to weigh myself. That number stuck in my head as I was the same weight as my husband.
He was mortified as he wants to gain weight and I was not too happy to say I weighed more than hubby.
2 kids later and I am sure I am still heavier than hubby BUT I still love my body and I do fit into my jeans that I had prior to baby 1 (muffin top included in this version though)
There is no need unless my 3/5 years olds want to know how much they weigh
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We have scales in our house but they are tucked away in our bedroom.
I hardly use them. I can tell when I have put on weight by my clothes.
My hubby weighs himself regularly.
My teen daughter had to weigh herself for a recent helicopter flight – she was not impressed.
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Scales are now banned in my house for this reason:
Last week I stepped on the scales and got one reading, I went to the toilet, did my business, and returned and stepped on the again and I weighed: A KILO AND A HALF HEAVIER.
Obviously the cheap home scales most of us have in our houses are a crock and should not even be trusted for weighing aeroplane luggage.
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I no longer weigh myself as I’m frightened by what the scales might say. These days if I want to find out how the low calorie regime is working I simply slip a ring on my pinkie. If it slips on and off easily, then I know that I’m going okay. I simply have no idea how much I weigh and I don’t want to know.
My wife, who is diabetic, weighs herself often because she has to maintain a particular weight for health reasons. She isn’t obsessive about it, though.
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I weigh myself first thing in the morning, naked, before eating breakfast and preferably after I have been to the toilet!
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SAME!
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I weigh myself every day, it’s not an obsession but I find it’s the best way to manage my weight. That way I know if I’ve gone over where I’m comfortable being at that it’s time to cut back a bit, I tend to wear a lot of dresses so my clothes aren’t a good enough indicator.
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I use mine for weighing luggage too
I do weigh my 3 1/2 year old as he has some food/digestion issues as I have to keep an eye on his weight between pediatric visits-we celebrate whatever the number says, plus he like to read the numbers himself now.
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I’m horrendously obsessive and can weigh myself up to 4 times a day, though usually twice- morning and night.
I do it to track it and feel like I have some control. When I was 16 (I’m 25 now) I had an eating disorder and was a bit batty about it all…. Now I very much subscribe to a healthy balanced diet, and try to get SOME exercise in every day. I’ll still treat myself, and have a bag of Cadbury creme eggs with the girls! I just find it an easy way to have that nutty control without doing any harm.
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Yep I’m one of those people who have become obsessed with my scales. Mine broke so I asked my husband to go out and buy another set and he came home with a super duper one that tracks muscle,BMI, how many calories you’ve eaten, fat percentage and weight. Crazy. But I do weigh myself at the same time each morning after I’ve been to the toilet. To me I like to keep on top of what I weigh because kilo creep can be hard to shift. Although I asked a really hot fit looking girl at my gym once what she weighed and she looked at me blankly and said she had no idea, I liked that!
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We have the same name, same spelling. Do you pronounce it line or lene? I say line.
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Hi! I say “line”. It is actually the “wish” name I want to use for if I ever have a little girl (I have two boys). Fingers crossed!
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My daughter is Emmaline (line)!
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Hi! I replied to you earlier but my comment has gone missing. I pronounce it EmmeLINE and use this as my name on Mamamia because if I ever have a little girl I’d like her to be called Emmeline (I have two boys!).
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Well good luck. I hope you get your wish….
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I am the opposite. I am in my mid 40s and only just bought scales for the first time in my life. I never used to weighmyself, but since I read ( more than once) that women generally put on 1 kg per year after the age of 40, I thought I should probably monitor my weight. I only weigh myself every 2 weeks or so and I have them at the bottom of a cupboard, out of sight. I think I have healthy attitude about scales, but now I feel I should give them away!
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Threw my scales out 4 years ago when I came home with my 3rd baby. Best thing I ever did. I have a couple of pair of jeans that let me know when I’ve been a little too friendly with my carbs.
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We have scales in our house but I no longer use them. About six years ago I was stepping on the scales every day, my whole mindset for the day was based on the outcome of whatever number the scales showed.
Then one day Miss 4 (now Miss 10) stepped on the scales after me. She looked at the number (with no clue what it actually said) put her hands on her hips & let out a big sigh – mumbling under her breath “no treats today”. From that day until now I’ve never stepped on the scales (hospital/dr/giving blood aside). Was a big wake up call seeing my little girl mimc my obsessive behaviour – not something I ever want to see again.
I go to the gym every day & I don’t need the scales to tell me when I’ve overindulged and need to rein it in.
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i weigh myself daily (at least). it’s an obsession and one that i would never want my kids to have. good on you for being strong enough not to use them Mia.
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I think it’s far more healthy and natural to gauge your weight based on how your clothes are fitting, and more importantly, how you are feeling about yourself!
I haven’t weighed myself for years because I find that my weight continually flactuates by 1-2kgs. Why make myself feel bad about gaining weight that I might end up losing during the week?
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Gah! So sensible. Why can’t I be this sensible?
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I can monitor my weight by how my clothes fit and how i feel so I don’t bother weighing myself. I used to though when I was pregnant, just out of curiosity and amazement.
My children are young so I’ll weigh them if they need medication to ensure the dosage is correct.
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My toddler daughter has always been a tiny eater and struggled to gain weight. I was getting obsessed weighing her… Every time she ate 2 mouthfuls I would weigh her hopefully again. My husband did us both a favour and chucked out the scales. Now the stress has been taken off and I’m more relaxed about her eating habits she has been eating more and definitely looks like she is gaining weight. Hooray for no scales!
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I have no scales in my house either. In my 20′s I was obsessed with weighing myself daily and my morning weight would determine the kind of day I had. I do watch what I eat, and keep an eye on tightening waistbands, but have come to realise that my weight is a number that I don’t care to know or share. I’m tall, slimmish and still wear the same sized clothes as I always have.
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I don’t tend to weigh myself but lately feeling like I need to. Can anyone tell me why, when you’re pregnant, you’re constantly asked your weight? This is my 2nd pregnancy (10 weeks) and I have been asked when I saw the GP for a referral, when I went for my ultrasound, when I got my blood test screening for Down’s syndrome….
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They check your weight a lot because it can be an indicator of how the baby is doing (ie too little/too much fluid around the baby), whether you’re at risk for gestational diabetes, and baby’s growth. It can also give them red flags if you are not putting on enough weight (how you are coping) or too much (reassure you you don’t need to eat a horse every night to have a healthy baby).
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It can depend on your care provider. The hospital I worked for didn’t ask people for their weight or weigh them when they came in for appointments. They were asked for a booking in weight and that was it. For all I know, the women could have lied and I would have been none the wiser. I don’t have a source at hand, but in terms of medical care, it’s an old fashioned rule to weigh women at each appointment, it doesn’t make any difference in terms of the weight or outcome of the baby (or the mother for that matter). If everything is going along swimmingly, the weight doesn’t matter; if things were not going well there would be other markers eg. larger than average abdominal measurements indicating a larger than average baby, high blood sugar indicating diabetes etc.
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Nope, no scales here either. I used to weigh myself on a weekly basis through my mid 20′s, then I moved to a house with no scales and haven’t looked back. Interestingly, being weighed at my obstetrician’s for my pregnancies at 32 and 35 I still sat at 72kg. I guess my diet and exercise haven’t changed dramatically, although diet for the better and exercise for the worse, so it makes sense that my weight stays roughly the same.
However, having given birth 5 months ago I know I still haven’t shifted the pregnancy weight as my clothes still don’t fit, so it’s time to drop the chocolate and get back into workouts!!
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daily.
Because I am trying to lose weight (absolutely need to), and i need to track how that’s going. because I weigh that often, I know my weight can fluctuate a couple of kilo’s up or down over a week.
If I weighed once a wk, and caught myself on a day where it was up by 2kg, it would trigger a meltdown, and a possible binge…… by weighing every day (or so), I can see whether it’s just a fluctuation, or a trend, and nip it in the bud.
Keeping my eye on the ball lol
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I agree. I’m not obsessional about it, but by weighing myself most days, I have become aware of the pattern of my weight when I am MAINTAINING my weight. Over the course of a week it can vary by up to 2 kilos, and I am aware of when in the week I am likely to weigh more and when I will weigh least. if I wasn’t aware of this I could totally freak out at a “wrong” result – especially as I am trying to lose weight – it could be very disheartening.
At the moment as I am stalled on the weight loss, I am happy to be maintaining, and I don’t weigh myself so regularly, but at least I have an indicator of where I am/should be at.
But I do agree that it is easy to get obsessed with always stepping on the scales.
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I threw out our scales a longtime ago. I hardly ever weigh myself…usually at gym every few weeks but my husband became obsessed. He would weigh himself in the morning, afternoon, evenings, before eating, after eating, before exercise and after, before bed, even after a poo! It drove me crazy so the scales disappeared.
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My hubby is obsessed too. He weighs himself every second day.
He panics if he puts on weight.
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I have a rather exxy set of electronic scales, only because they go up to a very high weight, and every 3 months they are dusted off TO WEIGH THE DOGS I have to weigh me then hold a dog and I have 6 and the biggest is over 60kg, but hey have to get their worming correct and that is all they are good for.
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I think that I might have seen one of your dogs at the chemist buying Slim-Sip tea and laxatives in bulk.
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I used to weigh myself now and again out of curiosity not obsession. Clothes did prove a satisfactory measure for me. Then we semi retired and my husband and I gained weight slowly but surely due to a change of lifestyle. He, in particular, remained in denial. After the doctor pointed out a few health consequences for both of us, I decided to try to get him involved in a way of raising his consciousness of caring for his body. We both had about 10kgs of unhealthy bulk to lose. So I thought of using my iPad calendar as a tool to measure small monthly weight losses. Our individual goals recorded on the last day of each month in advance, aimed for an achievable weight loss of 1.5kgs monthly. We are both only a couple of kgs from our individual targets now with little sacrifice or fuss, and this small amount of competition, has got him thoroughly involved and focused. We are exercising together and only compare scale losses with interest not fear, once a month. We treat ourselves with small rewards monthly and if we have social occasions during that month, they can be incorporated easily. I am amazed it has worked for him for months now as he seems to like measuring via numbers and we both have not lost the incentive to continue. When targets have been reached, we may just continue our little ‘game’ to maintain our results. It’s working for us. We have the right attitude about it. We just want to be healthy, happy and mobile for decades to come. That’s the motivation.
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Judgement is often the reason why we enter a toxic relationship with the scales. We have been judged by ourselves, the media or others and learnt we need to lose weight.
By breaking down the value we as a society place on appearance we can start to chip away at the idea that our worth is intrinsically linked to how our body looks.
If we stop defining ourselves and others by body shape and size, emotional power will be stripped from the scale leaving a natural, healthy relationship in its place.
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I’ve lost all the “weight” i put on during my two pregnancies and eat very healthily and try and be active – but my waist measurement is still 88 cm and the healthy websites all say it should be under 80cm for women. It seems that I’m losing weight but not reducing my waist size. Would really appreciate some advice on this as am keen to be as healthy as I can be for my children as I already suffer from MS and want to make sure I am controlling all other aspects of my health as well as I can.
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Don’t focus on your weight on the scales. It’s not necessarily a good indication of how your tracking.
I would highly recommend introducing weights into your exercise routine. Weight training is the fastest way to change the shape of your body.
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I’ve only seen websites refer to 88cm for women.
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