The Scale

The scale is powerful. It has an amazing ability to bring great joy or great disappointment to a person. It’s interesting how much importance I can put on a few numbers. It’s as if the scale itself judges on whether or not I have been successful. The scale becomes my affirmation. It tells me that I’m being healthy or not, right?

I spoke with someone recently who has been trying to lose excess weight and has come up against a common problem. She was doing everything right—counting calories, balancing foods groups, and drinking water—but for some mysterious reason, she hadn’t lost any weight.

It can be discouraging! When you work at it for weeks, only to have your one source of affirmation tell you that you’ve failed. I’ve seen people give up based on what the scale tells them.

I don’t understand why the numbers on the scale don’t move as fast for certain people, or why there are times when the numbers go down rapidly or slowly. I don’t believe that the scale is the only measure of success when it comes to being healthy and even getting fit. There are other ways to measure success.

Measuring inches, for example, will show the loss of fat from the body. Sometimes our bodies are gaining muscle through our exercise, which will appear on the scale as no weightloss. We very well might be losing excess fat and inches, however.

Scales are important to a degree because they can help give us an idea if we are doing something right or wrong over a long period of time, but it’s not the only measure of success. Sometimes the best measure of success is whether or not we have met the personal goal we set, regardless of the short term results.