There was a time when I weighed myself on a daily basis.

It was a habit that started slowly and mindlessly, and it ended up taking up a lot of my time and energy. Before I knew it, I was using the scale to define my self-worth, and it wasn’t pretty.

If the number went up, even slightly, I felt endless amounts of frustration toward myself. If it stayed the same, I had this sense of anxiety that tomorrow I might gain a pound. If I lost a little bit of weight, it felt like I was on top of the world for a split second—but even that was fleeting.

I had completely attached all of my value as a person to the number on the scale.

If you find yourself attaching your self worth to your weight—or any external factor in your life—then now is the time to let that go. There is no number on a scale that will make you a better, happier or more worthy-of-love person. As long as we attach our value to our weight or our looks, we will always be trapped and riddled with anxiety about our ever-changing appearances.

Our bodies are living, breathing and changing constantly. If we put our worth as beings on something as malleable as clay, we will forever be walking on pins and needles.

It has now been two years since I stepped on a scale to determine my worth—here’s what changed for me:

I began to feel my body’s cues more clearly. Instead of thinking of my body as a number on a scale, I started to pay attention to how I was feeling. When I wasn’t focused on my weight, I was able to listen to what my body was really asking for. Sometimes I was really hungry, and other times not so much. But it came from my feeling instead of my logic of trying to decide if that next snack would make or break my happiness.

I became healthier. Low and behold, when I stopped weighing myself, I started getting healthier and eating right was easy. The mindset behind restricting calories, and watching a number on a scale, is that of scarcity—so it made it really hard for me to nourish myself and actually do what was healthy for my body. When I shifted out of the scarcity mindset and started focusing on fueling myself with my food, I was well nourished and my body showed it.

I stopped attaching my self-worth to the food choices I made. When I weighed myself regularly, I gave so much power to the number appearing under my feet to fuel my happiness and determine whether or not I had been “good.” When I stopped having a tangible number to attach my self-worth to, I became more free to experience what was actually important to me. It wasn’t an overnight process, but over time, I learned that having an extra piece of cake really didn’t make me a better or worse person—it was just a choice, and I could make a new one tomorrow.

A scale is just a way to measure our gravitational pull toward the earth. That’s it. It doesn’t define you, it doesn’t measure how loving you are, it doesn’t measure how beautiful you feel, and it certainly doesn’t measure your value as a person.

Stepping off the scale and into your body can change your entire relationship with yourself. It’s definitely worth a try.

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Author: Natalie Cañizares

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

Photo: Flickr/Emily