Ep. 210: The Scale in Binge Eating Recovery: What to Do About Weighing

Welcome to the Brain Over Binge podcast where you learn a simple brain-based approach to ending binge eating. I'm Katherine Hansen, author of Brain Over Binge and the Brain Over Binge Recovery Guide, and I'm really glad you're here. Before we get started, I want to let you know about a new special discount that I'm making available for podcast listeners who join the Brain Over Binge group. The group is for those of you who want extra support and accountability as you let go of binging. I lead four live group coaching calls per week, plus you'll get daily coaching and encouragement on our private forum and full access to the Brain Over Binge course while you're a member. This discount for podcast listeners will be $60 off your first month in the group when you use the code Freedom99 at checkout. The regular price of the group is $159 per month, so with that code you'll pay $99 for your first month, and again that code is Freedom99. After your first month, your membership will renew at the regular price unless you cancel. There's no commitment, you can cancel anytime and stay for as many months as you need. Also, if you already subscribed to the Brain Over Binge course, you'll get an additional course member discount, which is equal to the monthly price of the course, so that your first month in the group will only be $80, and then $140 per month after that, and again you can cancel anytime. You can learn more about the group at brainoverbinge.com/group, and I'll put that link in the discount code in the show description. And before I get started with today's topic, I want to read you a quick testimonial for one of our amazing group members. She said, "I have not been since I started this program, and I am forever grateful to you. Thank you for sharing your journey, writing a book, and all the coaching that you do. It is life-changing. I never thought this would be in my past, so thank you from the bottom of my heart." And now for this episode, I'm going to talk about a topic that came up in the Brain Over Binge group recently, and that topic is the scale, and more specifically what to do about weighing yourself during binge eating recovery. You may wonder whether or not you should weigh yourself, or if you should get rid of the scale completely, or if you should take a middle of the road approach where you weigh yourself less frequently. You may find that the scale affects you in many ways in recovery. It's possible that weighing leads directly to urges to restrict, or you may find that not knowing your weight leads to a lot of anxiety and preoccupation, or weighing yourself might bring up thoughts that encourage binging. When this topic comes up in the group, or in one-on-one coaching, I always try to talk each individual through determining what is the best approach for them. Because this is an area where I do not think there's one right answer for everyone. In this podcast episode, I want to help you personally think through what may best support your own recovery when it comes to the scale. Because there's no one weighing strategy that you have to follow in order to recover, it's about connecting with what feels most helpful to you. I've seen people come up with a variety of solutions that work well for them. Some people decide that it's best not to weigh themselves at all, especially early on in recovery. Some people weigh very occasionally, just as a data point, to monitor overall trends. Some decide that once a month gives them whatever information they want without making the scale too important, and others decide to weigh themselves on a more regular schedule and they do fine with that. Even within traditional eating disorder treatment, there is not one single universally used approach to weighing. Some well-established cognitive behavioral treatments, including CBTE, recommend regular in-session weighing where the person sees the number and then discusses it with the therapist, with the goal being to look at patterns over time rather than reacting to one individual reading. Other treatment approaches handle weighing differently, and what each clinician actually does varies. Some use open weighing where the person sees the number, some use blind weighing where the number is not shared, and some may shift between the two depending on each individual, depending on the diagnosis, or the stage of treatment. Research comparing different approaches to weighing, including open and blind weighing, is limited. So we don't have strong evidence showing that one method is clearly best for every person in every situation. I think that's really helpful to know because it means that you don't need to get caught up in trying to find the one official correct answer. Even within traditional treatment there is nuance and personalization based on each individual. Of course I do want to mention here that there are cases when weighing whether open or blind is a medical necessity, especially in cases of anorexia where weight needs to be restored safely, but that's not what I'm discussing in this episode. I'm talking about it from the perspective of body image and self-monitoring, not medical necessity. From the brainover binge perspective, you can make this scale decision a little simpler by bringing it back to the two main recovery goals that I talk about on this podcast, which are to dismiss urges to binge and to eat adequately. Instead of asking yourself, is weighing myself good or bad, or how often am I supposed to weigh myself, you can ask yourself two more useful questions. First, how does weighing affect my ability to dismiss urges to binge? And second, how does weighing myself affect my ability to eat adequately? So let's take those one at a time. I'm going to talk first about dismissing urges to binge. The scale can absolutely become something that brings up urges to binge. And remember when I say urges to binge, I mean any thought, feeling, or physical sensation that encourages you to binge. Maybe you step on the scale and the number is higher than you expected. And then almost immediately your brain says something like, "You've gained weight so you might as well give up and binge." Or, "Now you need to start a diet tomorrow so you should just binge one last time tonight." Or maybe that number is exactly the same as the last time you weighed yourself and your brain says, "What's the point? Nothing is changing anyway so I might as well binge." And even seeing a lower number can bring up an urge. Your brain might use a lower weight as an excuse to binge. You may have thoughts that say, "You can afford to binge if you lost some weight." Or, "You've been doing so well so you deserve to eat anything and everything tonight." The details and the content of these thoughts can be different for each person, but if the message is encouraging you toward a binge or giving yourself permission to binge, it's an urge. And if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know that urges do not make you destined to binge. The number on the scale does not cause bingeing. The number can trigger urges in your lower brain in some of the ways that I've explained, especially if you've repeatedly reacted to weight changes with benches in the past. Your brain learns those associations so that when you get on the scale, those automatic reactions can come up. But it's important to remember that you're never powerless in those situations. You can see a number that you've strongly disliked, and you can have a flood of binge thoughts, and none of that means that you have to binge. But at the same time, just because you can dismiss urges that arise after weighing does not mean that you need to deliberately generate those urges over and over again for no useful reason. You don't need to let the scale become something that makes recovery unnecessarily difficult, and I'll come back to this point in a minute. But I want to stay on the point of reminding you that even if your brain reacts to the scale with urges to binge, you can still stay binge free. This is really important to remember with any weighing strategy that you use. Because even if you pick what you feel like is the right approach for you, you still could get urges based on the number, and you need to know that you can absolutely deal with what arises without ever turning to binging. You don't have to be okay with the scale number to avoid a binge. You don't have to get rid of all disappointment or anxiety to avoid a binge. You can learn to allow those thoughts and feelings to pass without going into harmful action. Again, it's so crucial to remember this regardless of the weighing strategy that you choose. You basically need to take away the scale's power to make you binge. Because it truly cannot make you binge. Now I'm going to talk about the second recovery goal of eating adequately, because I think this is where the scale can sometimes cause even more trouble. Here's an example. You step on the scale and the number is higher than what you wanted. But instead of your brain saying give up and binge, maybe it says you need to cut back today. Maybe you have urges to skip meals or not eat certain foods, or exercise more to make up for the change in the number. Those thoughts may feel just as compelling as urges to binge. When you follow those restriction thoughts and let the scale interfere with your willingness to give your body enough food, that ends up leading to even worse urges to binge and even lower self-control because you're in that starvation state. So it may not so directly and immediately lead to urges to binge and binging, but it eventually does. And again, this is something to be aware of with any approach to weighing that you use. You have to know that seeing a different number does not suddenly change your basic need for adequate nourishment. And having urges to restrict based on the number does not mean you're destined to follow those urges to restrict. It's also important to remember that an individual scale reading can change for reasons that are not indicative of weight gain. Such as food and fluid in your body, hydration, sodium, hormones, digestion, bowel movements. There are many things that can affect this number. When putting those normal fluctuations aside, even if the number does represent a true change in your weight and you don't like it, you still are not destined to take harmful actions that negatively affect your recovery. Now this is not an episode about all of the issues surrounding weight and recovery. It's about how to approach the scale. If you do have questions or concerns about weight, I've compiled all of my blog posts and podcast episodes on the topic at brainoverbenge.com/weight, which I've also put in the show description. But for the purposes here, the main message is that you can't let a scale and the digits that you see on it become something that sends you in the wrong direction in recovery. You can't let it go. become something that makes it too hard to eat adequately or too hard to dismiss the urges. You may see your weight and wish it were different, and I understand that that's challenging, and I want you to have compassion for yourself while still protecting your recovery as the first priority. So now I want to dive deeper into the point I made about not making recovery unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Just because you can dismiss the urges to binge or the urges to restrict that may appear after weighing does not mean you need to put yourself in this challenging situation over and over again. One thing that is clearly not helpful that should never be in your weighing strategy is impulsive or compulsive weighing, and I'm talking about getting on the scale multiple times a day, or weighing yourself because you suddenly "feel fat" or bloated, or checking before and after you eat, or before and after you exercise, or repeatedly stepping on the scale hoping to see whether you've lost weight. That kind of weighing tends to make it so much harder to stay on the path of healing. So know that whatever approach you decide on, it should not include this type of impulsive, reactive, or overly frequent weighing. And I think that brings us to the practical question of how often to weigh. A simple guideline that I like is this, weigh yourself only as much as is useful, and no more, and in a way that does not make it unnecessarily difficult to accomplish your two main recovery goals of eating adequately and dismissing urges to binge. And by the term "useful", I don't mean "useful" to the part of your brain that desperately wants to know. I'm talking about asking yourself, "Is there a reasonable purpose for having this information?" Then bring it back to those two recovery goals. When I weigh myself, does it repeatedly bring up urges to binge that I have a hard time dismissing? Does weighing make me want to eat less than I know I need? Does one number affect my eating for the rest of the day? If weighing is constantly interfering with recovery in those ways, I think it's really supportive to reduce your exposure to it. Maybe that means weighing once a month instead of every day. Maybe it means putting the scale completely away for a while. Maybe it means deciding that you simply don't need to know your weight right now. That it's much more important to focus on healing, and nourishing, and honoring your body, and taking weight completely out of the picture. That's not the same thing as saying, "The scale is too powerful for me, and I can never handle seeing the number." Because the scale does not have that kind of power. When you put the scale away or reduce your weighing, it's simply a practical and self-caring decision to know that you're not powerless if you see the number, but that it just does not benefit you in any way, and it's making things way too stressful. Now on the other hand, it's possible that not knowing your weight may make things more challenging for you. Not knowing could create a lot of uncertainty or preoccupation. In your brain may start filling in the blanks and telling you that you're gaining weight or you're losing weight and driving you to restrict or binge based on its predictions or assumptions. In those cases, having some actual data about your body, instead of letting your brain run away with stories about your body, could actually be supportive. In that situation, you may decide that some infrequent planned weighing is very helpful. In those planned weighing sessions could be an opportunity to practice the brain-over-binge principles of dismissing any urges that come up. Whenever you decide to step on the scale, it's important to have awareness and realize that your brain might have a reaction. You don't need to hope that you'll feel completely calm. You can expect that old conditioning to show up and know that you can recognize any unhelpful thoughts and you can rise above them. There's one special situation that I want to mention here and that's if you're stopping purging through self-induced vomiting or laxative use or even excessive exercise. Stopping purging can involve changes in hydration, fluid balance, bloating, and digestion. And those things can affect body weight temporarily and seeing those changes can be distressing. In these cases, I strongly recommend appropriate medical and nutritional support. The professional can help you monitor your weight if that's necessary, but self-monitoring of weight while the body is going through the changes from stopping purging can make it much more difficult to stay the course and allow your body to regulate. It can be a really wonderful way to honor your body and let it go through the healing process of stopping purging without letting a number on the scale interfere in any way. This is but one example of how the approach to weighing that you choose can depend on where you are in recovery. And your approach to weighing can also evolve over time. Maybe right now the scale generates so much noise that you do decide to put it away, but six months from now, maybe you feel differently. Or maybe six months from now you realize that you don't miss knowing the number at all and you feel no need to start again. Either outcome is fine. The larger goal is not to find the perfect relationship with the scale, the goal is lifelong recovery. And as your recovery becomes stronger and stronger, food and weight begin to occupy less of your attention and your desire to weigh can fade naturally. Your weight can become relatively uninteresting and you can start to see it as just a number. Letting go of frequent weighing does not mean giving up on your health or deciding that your physical well-being doesn't matter. Your health is so much bigger than a number on the scale. You can still care for your body, eat adequately, stay attentive to how you're feeling and functioning and get appropriate medical care when needed without closely monitoring your weight on your own. For many people weighing themselves less actually creates more space to focus on the things that are genuinely supportive of health instead of allowing a number to take up all of their attention in that area. I'm now going to wrap up this discussion and I really hope it has helped you take some of the pressure off of deciding exactly what you should do about the scale. Instead of looking for one correct rule, pay attention to how weighing interacts with your recovery. And know that even if the scale brings up some urges, you are capable of dismissing them. If you'd like more help determining the right approach for you when it comes to the scale or any other issue in recovery, I'd love to have you join us in the BrainOverBinge group. You can learn more at brainoverbinge.com/group and remember to use the promo code Freedom99 to get $60 off of your first month in the group. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you'll join me again next time. And as always, I want to encourage you and remind you that you have the power to change your brain and live a binge-free life. The BrainOverBinge podcast is produced and recorded by BrainOverBinge Recovery Coaching LLC. All work is copyrighted by BrainOverBinge Recovery Coaching LLC and all rights are reserved. As a disclaimer, the host of the BrainOverBinge podcast are not professional counselors or licensed healthcare providers and this podcast is not a substitute for medical advice or any form of professional therapy. Eating disorders can have serious health consequences and you are strongly advised to seek medical attention for matters relating to your health. Please get help when you need it and good luck on your journey.