It’s been almost three weeks since I got on my scale.

I believe this to be the most mentally healthy thing I have ever done in my livelong days. 

Like clockwork, each morning I’d get on the scale and plan for the day. If the numbers were up, even slightly, I’d feel sad, disappointed. I’d vow not to eat anything but vegetables that day. If the numbers were down, I’d give myself a proverbial pat on the back, and then vow to replicate whatever I had done yesterday, but then begin to make excuses for the why the numbers were down and vow not to get my hopes up too much, after all, a full month on a no-carb, no-sugar diet only left me with an actual loss of 2 numbers in the tens column. Like clockwork, each evening I’d do the same.

The scale is an evil addiction.

So now it’s gone. Like any addiction, which I can tell you from when I cold-turkey quit Diet Coke, the first few days were the hardest. Muscle memory would urge me to get on the scale right in between removing my jammies and getting into the shower. It took almost three weeks, but the urge is gone.

Mostly.

I have no idea how much I weigh today.

Or how much I weighed last night, or yesterday morning. Or last week.

It doesn’t really matter. I exercise, some. I eat well, mostly. Look, I could definitely exercise more. And I most definitely could eat better. But you know something, when I was exercising daily, I was still a slave to my scale, and the numbers didn’t seem to work in my favor, which only led to sadness and disappointment. And when I was eating almost nothing, being hungry from days and months at a time, swearing off bread and other delicious things, I was indeed still being disappointed by my scale. This is called having a 38-year-old metabolism that I abused through yo-yo dieting all through my 20s and early 30s. 

And you know what? BREAD IS AWESOME.

I’m just not going to let it have that power over me anymore.

I want to love this body, since after a year and a half, I realize it’s not going anywhere. It’s mine now, it’s here to stay. And I do believe I’ll get there.

This was the first step.

And I assure you, it wasn’t a small one.