There are very few pictures of me when I was pregnant. Whenever someone tried to snap a photo, I would run screaming from the room or hide my face. I straight-up bawled when I saw video footage from my first baby shower. I didn’t recognize myself. The image of my giant moon-face opening presents in maternity cargo pants (it was 2004!) is burned into my memories.
I wish I could blame my weight gain on genetics, but it was likely behavioral. When I was pregnant with my oldest son, I lived in an illegal apartment in New York City. I could not access a kitchen, though we were allowed a hot plate and a mini-fridge. The latter was rarely used because I swore I could smell whatever was in there while I slept, making me nauseous. I developed an intense aversion to hummus, one of my favorite foods. If I came within breathing distance of hummus, my throat would constrict, and my bile would start rising. I also hated the smell of grilled meats and fried chicken, which was inconvenient considering our apartment was on top of a fried chicken joint. This was also the fried chicken shop where we paid our weekly rent in cash.
I worked at a bar on the Lower East Side. Not a hipster bar, more like a neighborhood dive right on the edge of Little Italy. I had applied for a job at a fancier new cocktail lounge. When I showed up for the open interviews, the line wrapped around the block, full of applicants with headshots. For a bartending gig! By the time I got to the front of the line and met the owner, I knew there was no way I could compete with the entire cast of A Chorus Line. He asked me if I had a headshot, and I said, “No. I didn’t know this was an audition.” He laughed and asked where I was from. When I told him I was from Bakersfield, California, he immediately jumped up and said, “my Grandparents are from there! How do you feel about a different type of job? I own seven bars. Let’s find you one!”
This is how I found myself working at Nice Guy Eddie’s on the corner of Houston and Avenue A. My regulars were the type of older gentlemen who would bring me gifts and say, “don’t ask where it’s from.” I also had a fair amount of ghostwriters who would nurse a drink and take full advantage of coffee refills for hours while I prodded them to tell me who they were writing for. (I eventually wore them down, but I would never spill those secrets.) After I found out I was pregnant, the kitchen staff made it their primary mission to, in their words, fatten me up. They would make me extra saucy hot wings and greasy cheeseburgers. They would fill my arms with food to take home, even though it meant lugging a tower of takeout boxes on the train while I traveled the 137 blocks north at 4 in the morning. My dishwasher from the Dominican Republic would bring me fried plantains that his mom made, and my favorite bouncer from Barbados would ask his wife to make double portions of lunch so I could have some too. Thanks to the love and generosity of these folks, I never went hungry. I did, however, gain 80 pounds.
The second and third times around the pregnancy carousel, I tried to control myself better. I ate plenty of salads, exercised, and kept it pretty balanced. I was busy with graduate school and a toddler (or a toddler and a preschooler), so I assumed my body would do it “right” this time.
Sigh. 80 pounds each time.
The amount of side-eye I received every time I stepped on the scale at the doctor’s office will stay with me for life. So too, the way the nurses would look at the charts, do a mental calculation, look at the charts again, and then look at my body. I could see the wheels turning in their heads, wondering how someone could gain 20 pounds in a month. It was mortifying.
Every appointment for my first two pregnancies revolved around my weight: what I was eating, what I was doing for exercise, and whether I was showing signs of gestational diabetes. I drank a million bottles of sugar water and took a million blood tests to rule out any underlying causes aside from my own failure. I wasn’t asked about my mental health, my safety at home, or my hopes and dreams for these babies. One time I admitted when asked that I had a sip of my sister’s wine at a wedding and was required to talk with a social worker, but that is the only thing I can remember that didn’t have to do with the numbers on the scale.
For my third pregnancy, I was lucky enough to get on the Bay Area’s #1 Obstetrician roster, as voted on in the weekly East Bay Express newspaper. At the first appointment, she looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “is there anything you’re afraid of?”
I burst into tears and said, “I don’t want to get on the scale again!”
She asked some gentle questions about my history and then, much to my surprise, said, “well, you’ll probably gain the same amount of weight, so why bother getting on the scale? No one really knows why we do it anyway.”
Dr. Amy showed me more compassion in that single visit than I’d felt in two whole pregnancies and births combined. I will forever be grateful. She even let me pull out my own baby, but that’s a story for another day.
I continue to have a love/hate relationship with my scale. The thing is, I love data. I’ve made a whole career of it. My last gym had a fancy body assessment machine that spits out TWO PAGES full of numbers about your body, and I still keep those metrics in a folder on my desk. I am a total numbers nerd. I love knowing that my left leg has slightly more muscle than my right leg or the percent of my body that is made up of water. When training for a goal, I love seeing the numbers shift as my body changes.
It’s easy to love the scale when it tells you a story you want to hear.
My home scale, however, is not so fancy. It does have an app that tracks your weight over time, so I guess that’s one step above the type of scale you weigh your grapes on at the grocery store. The scale lives in the laundry room, which is also where I store most of my clothes. This means that the scale beckons me to step on it when I am getting ready in the morning. Never mind that I’m not pregnant, am not at risk of health complications, and have no good reason to know my weight. I do it anyway, even when I feel strong and healthy.
When I get on that scale, one of two things happens to my mood. Here is a real-life example:
Monday: Get on the scale, and see that I have maintained the exact number for my goal weight. Congratulate myself for my hard work.
Thursday: Get on the scale, and see that now I am two pounds heavier than I was on Monday. Feel like garbage.
The worst part about this example was that the two-pound difference took me from XYZ weight to X(Y+10)Z weight. So even though the change was within the margin of error for the stupid scale, the emotional effect of going from 128 to 130 was outsized.
I AM NOT EVEN TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT!
This obsession haunts me to step on any scale I see, even those 25-cent scales at truck stops that also tell your fortune. If you have a scale in your bathroom and I visit you, that scale is gonna see some action. The anger at seeing a number I don’t want to see is overshadowed by the possibility of seeing a number that says, “you are doing great. You are worthy of celebrating.”
Breaking this habit will require unity between my mind and body. In the running world, there is a term called RPE—the rate of perceived exertion. It’s a way to coach runners at all different paces and abilities. It’s a 1-10 scale based on effort, not metrics. Instead of jumping on the scale to define my worth, I need to pay attention to my RPP—the rate of perceived puffiness.
When I am truly in my body, I am hyper-aware of its quirks. I know which legumes make my pants feel tighter and which week of the month my bras fit better. I can feel it in my face when I need to drink more water and in my calves when I need extra foam rolling. Our bodies are complex machines designed by a master builder, and they should fascinate and delight us. Instead, by compulsively weighing myself, I’m reducing my value to three numbers. I define success in one way instead of the myriad ways we can find amazement in our capacity.
Please do me a favor. After reading this, close your eyes and scan your body from head to toe. Focus on every small and wonderful thing, from the crown of your head to the very tips of your fingers and toes. Do this slowly, pausing to marvel at how much thought goes into how these systems work together. Once we take in what a miracle our bodies are, I hope we resist the urge to label it a winner or a loser based only on some arbitrary range of what is acceptable.
Honor God with your body, not the scale. Your body was bought for a price… a price that is immeasurable.