“He remembered who he was and the game changed.” ~Lalah Delia
scale. Those horrible words and those horrible numbers. It can strike fear into the heart of any normally happy person. We look at guidelines and BMI charts and always think, “That should be lower.”
Have you ever been having a perfectly good day and suddenly think, “Maybe I should weigh myself?” And just like that your day is ruined.
How can we tell a $20 bathroom scale how we feel about ourselves?
I remember stepping on the scale and seeing numbers that somehow determined how I rated myself. What a ridiculous way to measure our worth. Yet many of us do it. Somewhere along the way we start to believe that if we’re underweight, we’re the same is more
I grew up in the 1990s, and I was told I should weigh 120 pounds. Thank you, Seventeen Magazine and the fashion industry. Well, I’m not tall. But that number became something I chased for years. I weighed myself religiously every day. I don’t care if I have energy or if I feel good. What mattered was the number on the scale. If I could reach that elusive number, all would be right with the world.
All around me, the message was the same: do more, eat less, weigh less. If I could reach this number, somehow, I would become the fittest version of myself.
People would supplement weight loss, I didn’t realize that I was often hungry and tired. I felt terrible, but the number on the scale was good. It made no sense.
At that time, I ran after losing my grandmother. Endorphins gave me a positive way to deal with grief. Running helped me process the pain. But then, as often as good things, it becomes something negative.
I realized something else – it made me smaller.
Regardless, it made me feel better about myself. So over the years, I’ve learned that if I run enough and eat enough, I can stay short. I remember being told in my early twenties that I had very little body fat. At the time, I wore it like a badge of honor. Looking back now seems a bit ridiculous.
Life, of course, has a way of changing things. After four pregnancies, the numbers on the scale became harder to control. Every time I gained weight, I would run back to try to get the number back down. It gets harder after each pregnancy.
Even when I added strength training, it wasn’t about building strength. It was about burning more calories. Everything revolves around pleasing the number on the scale. If I had to do jumping jacks between each exercise to burn more calories, I did it. I never consider whether I am getting stronger. Honestly, it didn’t matter.
Then something unexpected happened.
After falling off my horse and injuring my ankle—and my pride—I couldn’t run like I used to. Instead, I started strength training elsewhere. I wasn’t training to burn calories. I was training to be strong. If I can’t run, I still need to be able to walk well.
I wanted to pick things up. Move things. Feel empowered in my body.
And then something strange began to happen. People started telling me that I had lost weight.
But when I stepped on the scale, the number didn’t go down. Actually, it went up.
I remember thinking, “It’s weird … my scale says it, but my old jeans fit again.”
Slowly, it dawned on me.
Maybe the scale isn’t telling the whole story.
For years I believed the scale told the truth about my health. What I eventually realized was that it only told me how much gravity was pulling on my body that morning. It cannot measure energy. It cannot measure muscle. Couldn’t measure how capable my body had become.
As a nurse practitioner, I still weigh patients in my clinical practice. Weight trends can be important in certain situations, and sometimes it helps guide medical decisions. It can affect your health, and my job is to heal you.
But that number was never meant to determine whether someone should have a good day.
It does not measure resilience.
It does not measure power.
It does not measure confidence or strength.
What frustrates me most is that the same narrative I grew up with is still alive and well. I see it in my teenage patients. I see it in the media that my children are exposed to.
Boys are often encouraged to be stronger and more capable. A high number on the scale is even celebrated if it means they are building muscle.
Girls often hear a different message. Smaller is better. I work every day to change that narrative. I want my girls and all girls to know that stronger is better.
I try to remind them of something I understood before: our bodies are meant to be strong, healthy, and capable. Strength is something we create, not something we shrink ourselves from.
I remember when that little bathroom scale could determine what kind of day I was going to have. The number can jump five pounds overnight from hormones or water retention, even if I’ve done everything “correctly” the day before.
Now I see it differently.
If I’m going to focus on a number, I’d rather focus on the amount of weight I can lift.
My deadlift numbers. My squat numbers. My bench press no.
Those numbers tell a much more meaningful story. They represent effort, consistency, and progress that actually reflect the work.
And the day we stop letting the scale define our worth is the day we finally start to appreciate what our bodies are capable of. I think it’s time.
about Shannon McDonald
Shannon MacDonald is a nurse practitioner and holistic nutrition coach who helps midlife women regain strength and build strength through her “Strong + Steady” approach. With over 20 years of nursing experience, she guides women to work with their bodies through protein optimization and progressive strength training rather than restrictive dieting. Shannon integrates clinical skills with faith-based wellness principles from her Nebraska homestead, where she trades scrubs for muck boots between work and client sessions. meet him navigatingtowellness.com.
