While visiting a friend, she mentioned being happy about having lost weight and asked how much I weigh. I said I didn’t know, at which point she asked if I wanted to use her scale, perhaps thinking the reason I don’t know is because I don’t own one. I politely declined, saying that I know what I eat so I don’t need to know what I weigh. 

On the drive home, I was thinking about our interaction. My first thought, quite frankly, was that what I weigh is none of most people’s business. I grew up at a time when the scale was not an obsession and I don’t recall general discussion of body weight until I was a teenager and had begun dieting and binge-eating.   

My second thought about the interaction was curiosity: Why would someone want to know what I weigh? I think my friend was comparing her body to mine (never a good thing). But what would the number I provide mean to her? Whatever her reason, it wasn’t a discussion I wanted to pursue because I was off duty as an eating disorders therapist and wanted to talk with her about other things.

What I said to her—I know what I eat, so I don’t need to know what I weigh—is something I discuss with clients. Many of them are so focused on the scale that they’re almost completely disconnected from the fact that a good deal of what they weigh as dysregulated eaters is due to not paying as much attention to eating as to weighing. As I tell them, probably ad nauseam, eating is the locomotive and weight is the caboose.

If you’re concerned about your weight, consider what would happen if you redirected that energy onto your eating—every meal, every bite. The goal is to be in touch with what is going into your mouth and, hopefully, enjoying it until you feel satiated. For most dysregulated eaters that takes a lot of effort initially but gets much easier over time.

How many minutes (hours?) in a day do you think or talk about weight? My guess is a lot—even if you can’t give words to thoughts, you still may have yucky feelings about your body. Moreover, so often when clients are eating and could be enjoying food, they’re instead thinking about how many calories they’re ingesting or pounds they’re putting on. Or anticipating what they’ll binge on next or feeling shame because they’ve eaten something they think they “shouldn’t” have. 

Ironically, actual eating should receive more attention when it often receives less. Our body and appetite are in the present when our minds are elsewhere, in the past or the future or drifting off to some other aspect of now. How crazy is that?

Best,

Karen