22 Feb The Day I Threw My Scale Away

My struggle with perfectionism began in my late teen years. I am a type-A personality and long for excellence in everything I do. And yet, I found myself in high school being on the B-string for sports and making above average (but not perfect) grades. High school is a rough place and the comparison game is played well every day.

While I honestly didn’t care about being popular and made choices to walk with friends who valued the Christian faith, I found myself experiencing emotional turmoil in a quest for self-discovery and significance. My father and I were also not getting along well in this season, which added to the turmoil.

I wanted to be in control of my life, but often felt very out of control. I decided to begin to apply my energy to an area of my life that I felt I  could control – my body.  It was then that I began to pursue a highly disciplined exercise and eating regime which I thought would result in “the perfect body.”

Little did I know back then that there is no “perfect body;” that we have each been fearfully and wonderfully made by God Almighty and each of us are uniquely formed and fashioned to show His incredible diversity in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes.

But I didn’t value that truth and sought to look like the girls I saw in the magazines. After going on a seriously low-carb diet and cutting out important food groups that are essential to a teenager’s growth, I reached my “goal weight”, which was 15 pounds lower than the healthy weight I had been.

Unfortunately, I started getting attention. Everyone noticed and commented. Boys who had never even looked my way were commenting on my appearance and it felt good. Girls were asking me how I’d lost the weight. I felt powerful and in control of my life, but I knew I couldn’t keep it up.

Only one of my friends during this time confronted me in love about my eating disorder and weight loss. With fire and tears in her eyes, she cornered me in the hallway after seeing me eat only vegetables in broth for lunch. “This has got to stop, Laura!” She said. “You are going to end up in a hospital!”

Foolishly I shrugged off her rebuke of life, equating it with jealousy.

A Journey into Freedom

After cycles of binging and starving my senior year of high school (my body was trying to speak to me and I wasn’t listening), I told my parents I needed to see a counselor. My counselor was also my pastor and he spoke God’s truth to me, reminding me that my real value came from Christ alone, not from a number on the scale or the size of my jeans. His words did not lack compassion as he pleaded with me through tears to reject the lies of the enemy and receive the truth.

I had never seen my pastor cry before, but my own struggle touched his heart in a deep wound of his own – his own daughter had been hospitalized for anorexia.

While I was deeply touched by his love and I truly agreed with his counsel, changing was a struggle. A struggle, in fact, that went on until my junior year of college when I experienced a spiritual awakening. This was a time of being steeped in God’s Word and showered with His loving presence, which brought about a deep and holistic healing to my soul, body, and mind.

Through encountering the presence of Christ and the power of His love, I realized that what I had been experiencing was a hunger of the heart to be known, loved, and accepted.

Now, at 38 years of age, I can say that I know what it is to be very weak before God. I know that while I am free from disordered eating, there are days when I still look in the mirror and have to take captive my thoughts, reminding myself that my worth lies not in my appearance (or my abilities, productivity, or the opinions of others for that matter) but in my identity as a daughter of the King of Kings.

While I had experienced significant freedom and healing in this area, having children seemed to re-open this old wound. For four pregnancies, I struggled as I watched the numbers on the scale go up, knowing that it was healthy and right (I was growing a baby!) and yet almost daily having to yield to God’s Spirit and resist my flesh.

During my pregnancies I had a love/hate relationship with the scale. I would toss out the scale in frustration and say “I’m never weighing myself again!” Only to end up with a scale back in the house after several months.  The day finally came after I had been working towards my postpartum weight loss with my fourth child when God’s Spirit nudged my heart gently, “Laura, your weight is an idol to you. Get rid of the scale. Trust Me – I made your body.“

I had known my weight had been an unhealthy focus for years and yet, such a clear word of the Lord cut through all my fleshly reasons for keeping the scale “just to check in.” My weight had become an idol once again. This time, it was different. This time, my sin was more about feeling “in control” of my life in a season when everything seemed to be “out of control.”

As a person who loves order, structure, and quiet, God had used my four little children to break my illusion of being in control and provide me with an invitation to trust Him to order my life.

That day, I threw away my scale and seek simply to embrace the concept of intuitive eating (trusting my body to tell me when I am hungry and full; No foods being “good,” “bad,” or “off limits”). This is making eating more and more of a non-issue for me. It’s been over two years since then and while I can say that every now and then I still have to take thoughts captive, cutting off the source of those numbers that glared back at me in the morning, trying to tell me I was good or bad, is gone.

Christ Jesus has set me free from disordered eating and I’m sharing my story today to let you know that if you have struggled with measuring your worth by your appearance or weight you are not alone.

There is freedom for you that can only be found at the cross of Christ; not through any effort of your own works. Don’t live a secret life of shame in your brokenness. Bring your brokenness to God and He will show you the path of healing, which most certainly involves taking your eyes off of yourself and putting them on Him.

You are worth much more than a number on a scale; You are a daughter of the King.

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Note: If you or someone you love suffers from an eating disorder or disordered eating, help is available. Visit https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org as a starting point with resources. Many professional counselors specialize in treating people with eating disorders as well.