Getting rid of the scales is a HUGE step, and definitely not one to take before you’re ready to (I myself haven’t gotten there quiet yet), but it’s a pretty good thing to do once the time is right.

The scales tell you nothing more than a number, a figure that doesn’t really mean anything.

You could be any number from 1 to 1,000, but that value doesn’t define what value YOU, as a person, have.

What scales don't account for:

They don’t account for muscle mass

They don’t account for the weight of an incredible personality

They don’t account the things that make up YOU

Often, all the scales do is make us sad, and lower our self worth, with a number that means nothing, and a societal expectation that is unrealistic for any of us to live up to (and neither should we, every BODY is different!).

For those of us who have experienced an eating disorder, the scales can become even more of an enemy, and so can all those ads of TV that go on and on about the numbers that they show, the fat blasters we should be drinking, and the crazy new year exercise plans we should be signing up for. (Here’s a heads up: unless your doctor has told you to cut something out, you probably don’t need to! All things are great in moderation, and that includes both exercise and an iced donut! In other news; carbs are actually your energy, so unless you want to do nothing but snooze all day, get munching on some potatoes!)

The first thing to do is to make absolutely sure that medically it is okay to stop weighing yourself.

If you’re still in the early stages of eating disorder recovery, it’s probably not time yet. Even if you don’t know your weight, it’s still medically necessary that someone does, but if you are at a stage where you don’t NEED to know what that number says, or where all of your weighing happens somewhere other than at home (like the doctors, gym, or chemist, there are loads of places that have pay scales if you think getting them out of your house would be a good idea), then it might be time for them to go!

Do whatever you like to your scales...

Smash them if you really want to, into little shards of unhappiness (guess what, you’re destroying something that made you miserable, talk about cathartic!)

Throw them into the deep realms of the bin

Or just give them away to someone who needs them

Without them, there is no temptation to step on at different points throughout the day and check how high or low the numbers go, or to judge your self worth accordingly.

Without them, you might be able to step away a little further from weight as a defining factor in how and why you matter, and get back to the fact that weight cannot measure how incredibly cool you are!

Even if you don’t want to, or aren’t ready to chuck out those scales for good...

Remember that number is not a representation of how smart you are, how kind you are, how talented you are or how much you are loved.

All that number can tell you is what your personal relationship with gravity is like. That’s it. Don’t let that one thing define you, because you are worth so much more than it.