“She remembered who she was, and the game changed,” said Lalah Delia. The scale, with its dreaded numbers, can instill fear in many people. Individuals often look at guidelines and BMI charts, thinking their weight should be lower.
Many have experienced a good day turning sour after deciding to weigh themselves. How can a simple bathroom scale dictate self-esteem?
She recalls a time when the numbers on the scale determined her self-value. She grew up in the 1990s, influenced by magazines like Seventeen and the fashion industry, which suggested she should weigh 120 pounds. This number became a goal she chased for years, weighing herself daily without regard for energy or well-being.
Society often promoted the message to do more, eat less, and weigh less. People complimented her weight loss, unaware that she felt starved and exhausted. The scale’s number never made sense in terms of how she felt.
After her grandmother’s loss, she took up running to cope with grief. While it helped initially, it eventually became a negative pursuit focused on staying small. In her early twenties, she was told her body fat was too low, which she once saw as an achievement.
Life changed with four pregnancies, making weight control harder. Even with strength training, her focus was on burning calories, not building strength. Everything revolved around the scale’s number.
An unexpected ankle injury from a horse fall forced her to stop running. She then started strength training with a different mindset: to be strong, not to burn calories. As she built strength, people commented that she looked like she had lost weight, but the scale showed an increase. Her old jeans fit again, revealing that the scale was not telling the whole story.
She realized that the scale only measures gravity’s pull on the body, not strength, muscle, or capability. As a nurse practitioner, she still weighs patients in clinical practice because weight trends can guide medical decisions and impact health. However, that number should not determine someone’s day.
The scale does not measure resilience, energy, confidence, or strength. What frustrates her is that the same narrative from her youth persists. She sees it in adolescent patients and media exposure. Boys are often encouraged to become stronger, while girls hear that smaller is better. She works to change this, advocating that stronger is better for all.
She wishes she had understood earlier that bodies are meant to be strong, healthy, and capable. Strength is built, not shrunk into. Previously, scale fluctuations from hormones or water retention could ruin her day. Now, she focuses on different numbers: the weight she can lift in deadlifts, squats, and bench presses. These numbers represent effort, consistency, and progress.
The day people stop letting the scale decide their worth is when they start appreciating what their bodies can truly do. She believes it is time for this change.
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