Scale Sanity

I sometimes hear about innovations in artificial intelligence. Discussions inevitably follow about how machines will take over and mankind will become their slaves. But this doesn’t scare me; I have already been a slave to a machine. I call it The Scale.

In my pre-OA life, I was either dieting or acting out in my disease and bingeing. The scale controlled or ridiculed me: It told me who I was and how to feel about myself. When I dieted, I weighed myself multiple times during the day, willing the machine to give me a lower number—if it didn’t, my day was ruined and I was a failure. If it did, I might be happy, but often felt dissatisfied because it still wasn’t enough. When I was acting out and overeating, the scale gathered dust, mocking me and waiting to show the measure of my failure. I ignored it and denied I had a problem in a desperate attempt to avoid the proof of my failure. Whatever the scale said, my obsession with what it told me about myself made me miserable and crazed. I was its slave.

As part of my OA recovery, I had to learn to relate to the scale in a non-crazy way. So my sponsor and I created guidelines to minimize my crazed obsession. At first I weighed once every three months on the scale at my doctor’s office. In that first year of program, I weighed four times and lost a total of 97 pounds (44 kg).

I’ve been in the program three years now. That weight is still lost, and I’m not looking for it. Today, the scale doesn’t make me crazy. I continue to honor limits around its use to keep the insanity at bay:

I weigh myself once a month, on the same day, at the same time. I write the number in my prayer journal or another place I can look it up but not see it every day. (Nowadays I often don’t even remember what last month’s number was and must look it up to know how this month’s number compares.)

I use the same scale, and regard only that scale’s number. Calibrations on scales differ. Comparing numbers from different scales gives me no new information and only provides fodder for my crazy thinking. If required to mount a scale in a doctor’s office, I simply don’t look. It doesn’t matter what that scale says. There are many reasons it could be different, but they have nothing to do with me.

Most important, I say a pre-scale prayer my sponsor taught me: “Higher Power, this is your number. You control the number, not me. From one minute before I step on this machine to one minute after I step off, nothing about me has changed. I just have a number I can use to help me in my recovery.”

This is my formula for scale sanity. It works if I work it.

— Joy, Texas USA