Letting Go of the Scale: What I Wish I Knew About Healing, Shame, and Trusting My Body

What do I know now that I wish I’d known earlier?

I wish I knew that life is supposed to change—and that I’m not meant to stay the same person forever. For a long time, I was fixated on becoming the “perfect” version of myself—an ideal crafted by ego, not soul. I worked hard to build this identity, this mold of who I thought I had to be. And because I spent so much time carving her out, I felt personally attacked when someone didn’t accept her.

But that version of me didn’t leave room to grow. I was rigid, attached to my identity, afraid to shift paths or perspectives. I see now that so much of my unhappiness came from the shackles I placed on myself—trying to stay consistent with an image I no longer resonated with.

Today, I’m learning to move more like water—flexible, responsive, grounded but flowing with life’s tides. Water doesn’t resist the container it’s poured into. It softens, it reshapes, it adapts. That’s what I’m learning to do with myself. With healing. With everything.

And like water, healing sometimes brings up sadness, discomfort, and uncertainty. But rather than resisting it, I’m learning to let it shape me into something more true. I wish I had known earlier that it’s okay to not have the answers. It’s okay to feel confused. It’s okay to feel like a fool sometimes. That’s the beauty of life—it’s not about control, it’s about experience.

What changed how I saw healing, intuition, my body, and myself?

One of the most defining shifts came when I made a quiet, intentional decision: I stopped weighing myself every day.

For years, the scale determined whether or not I was allowed to feel good. If the number went down, I gave myself permission to eat what I wanted. If it went up—even by half a pound—I punished myself with restriction, guilt, fatigue, and caffeine just to make it through the day.

The number dictated my emotions. It was the first voice I listened to each morning—before my body, before my intuition, before anything else.

One day, I decided to step away. I told myself I needed a break from the emotional rollercoaster that came with that number. I stopped weighing myself and simply trusted that I was eating in a way that supported my body. No more daily check-ins with shame. No more emotional yo-yoing. No more calculating my worth through ounces.

And I felt peace.
Real peace.
The kind that doesn’t ask for permission.
The kind that doesn’t need justification for enjoying food.

After about three weeks of not stepping on the scale, I got curious. I weighed myself—and yes, the number had gone up.

In the past, that would have spiraled me into punishment. I would’ve panicked. Restricted. Overcorrected.
But something inside me said, “No more.”

Without thinking, I put on my running shoes and walked to my apartment gym for the first time in years—not out of guilt, but from a grounded place of presence. I wasn’t reacting. I was responding.

That moment was everything.
It showed me that the break I gave myself—those quiet three weeks—created just enough space for something new to emerge. For the first time, I felt like I had the capacity to make a different choice.
A loving one. A wise one.

What I would gently tell someone going through the same thing:

Healing your relationship with food, your body, or yourself doesn’t come from force. It doesn’t come from punishment or guilt.

It begins with compassion.

It begins with noticing the unhealthy cycles—like my daily weigh-ins—and asking, “How is this actually making me feel?”

I used to only reward my body when I felt it deserved it. I was driven by shame, by fear, by punishment dressed up as motivation. It was a cycle I didn’t even know I was repeating—because it felt so familiar. It mirrored patterns from my childhood, from a culture of control disguised as discipline.

But when I broke the cycle—when I created just a little space from the source of shame—I gave my body and mind the room to breathe.
To listen.
To heal.

And like water, I flowed through the challenge.
I didn’t force change.
I let it come naturally—because I finally made space for a new way to exist.