Not weighing myself combined with doing Alpha on the regular has made me feel surprisingly good. I say surprisingly because usually when I try and detox from the scale I get a little panicked and assume nothing is happening on my body if I am not tracking it every day. That is skewed. I was talking to my boyfriend’s sister the other day—a personal trainer, used to play in the Lingerie Football League, recently had a baby and still looks like athlete Barbie—and she told me she doesn’t weight herself. She said that even if she does ten squats she instantly feels better about her body.
When I am lifting weights, even if I am the slowest to get my reps done in the class and am lifting the lightest amount, I still get back to the locker room and give myself appreciative nods in the mirror as I walk past. Sure my face looks like it just had a violent allergic reaction it’s so red, my hair is plastered to my scalp on all sides with errant curls springing from the sweat, and I am still heaving a bit. But damn if I don’t feel good.
I see myself the way I did when I was 150 pounds, even knowing that I am not. I can still spot my rounded midsection—even if I am donned in my usual suit of black to instantly-slim—yet, knowing what I know about my current weight, my extra girth, all of it, I still feel as though I’m a skinny person after doing multiple rounds of squats, jump ropes and high pulls.
Now if I were to go weigh myself right after and nothing happened, or I was down a fraction of a pound, all that good spirit about what I’m accomplishing would fly out the window.
There is something to be said for not weighing yourself. I wasn’t going to bring up any of the controversy with the latest “Biggest Loser” winner, Rachel Frederickson getting down to 105 measly pounds from her starting weight of 260 lbs, but I feel it’s important to be addressed now that I am doing things all over again in a much healthier way than the show.
Of course “The Biggest Loser” wants big ratings to keep it’s spot in television, and clearly TBL equates big ratings with big weight loss. And sure it is incredible giving overweight people who feel like they’ve lost hope a huge chance to demolish the extra weight on their body in minimal time, but at what cost? Brutalizing your body? That’s the best way I can put it, having done it and now seeing Rachel go much further.
I started out on the show weighing 239 lbs and lost 92 lbs to reach 147 lbs. I will admit for a time there, I got caught up in the snowball weight loss and wanted more, I wanted to get to 120 lbs and once it became increasingly difficult to even get lower than 150, I started to see my body looked A-okay around 150. It wanted to stay there; going to 120 would have been outrageous on my frame.
Without saying a single bad thing about Rachel, as she did what she felt she had to do, and I can relate, it honestly horrified me that this is what “The Biggest Loser” has come to, encouraging this kind of obsession with the scale. I will always be eternally grateful for the ways in which I did learn to be healthy while at the ranch, which were many. But this conviction that TBL has that enormous weight loss in a sickeningly short period of time is the road to healthy is off. It should be addressed or altered. Rachel was beautiful at 260 pounds and is beautiful now even if her ideal weight is 105 pounds, which I suspect it’s not. I don’t think she is any more of an incredible person than she was before because she weighs less. And, yes, losing weight when it has been a struggle will do wonderful things for your psyche, I can attest to that. But it saddens and disappoints me that we as a a society should feel a blatant level of shame and body-dysmorphia until we are thin.
You can be beautiful and have cellulite. You can be beautiful and be a body builder. You can be beautiful with stretch marks and a baby on your hip. You can be beautiful and be a petite little one. Whatever your size, or the number on the scale, it does not equate to how much you’re allowed to love yourself.
Love yourself even with the stretch marks and cellulite, hard though it may be at times, because if or when you get to that coveted number on the scale, trust me, it might not mean much if you haven’t accepted who you are.
-Cassandra