do you weigh yourself?

I don't.

And I think I can say this with some degree of certainty now after 8 weeks. Plus I even managed to stop the nurse who was weighing me for my recent ECG from telling me my weight or writing it where I could see it (even though she had *no idea* what I was on about and I could so easily have cheated).

But I still really want to.

I liken it to a smoker who knows they have to give up smoking for their health but still really wants to do it. Ask in them in 6 months (or even 6 years) if they would like to take it up again and I bet 9 out of 10 times the answer is 'yes' - but they don't do it because they know it's not good for them.

So I'm not expecting to be happy about it. I just know I shouldn't.

Mostly because it is not the great stress reliever I thought it was. I thought it was helping me to relax because I knew what I weighed, so I was either 'good' or 'bad' (in which case I needed to 'work harder').

hmmmm

But now that I've stopped I can see that there are far less consequences to everything, which is helpful:

• I am able to eat without worrying what the scales will say
• I can stop exercising without worrying what the scales will say
• I can sleep through the night without having to get up just to check what the scales say

And without the scales having so much to say all the time, there's far more chance for me to hear what I have to say:

• I say I need to eat because my body cannot sustain starvation
• I say I need to eat because I need my mind to function properly
• I say I need to stop exercising at the moment to allow my heart to heal.
• I say I am in charge - not the scales and not ED.

After all, my life is worth more than a number on the scales. I am important in the lives of others and that gives me value which cannot be measured. So even though my jeans didn't fit this morning, and even though I have cried far too much over this fact, I will still not be weighing myself. Will you?