Yesterday, I had a physical.  It went really well, my doctor lowered my blood pressure medication and was satisfied with my lifestyle strategies overall.  When the nurse weighed me, I asked her to do a “blind” weight.  In the eating disorder world, patients are encouraged to forgo weighing themselves independent of the treatment staff who use weights as a metric to gauge treatment success.  We get weighed but aren’t told the number, hence, “blind” weights.  Over the last couple of months, I have been so tempted to get on the scale (I haven’t seen “my number” in a year and a half) but have resisted because I knew it wouldn’t contribute positively to my recovery.

When I got home from the visit, I was feeling good but then reviewed my visit summary and, unbeknownst to me, my weight was staring me in the face and it wasn’t pretty.  I went from feeling good to feeling crappy in 0.2 seconds.  I was blindsided, I cried, I was disappointed, angry and dejected.  Of course, I wasn’t focusing on the positive but on that stupid number because it was nowhere near where I wanted it to be.  Even though I have improved my eating habits, almost eliminated my binge episodes and lost 3 sizes, it still wasn’t good enough.  So, I spent part of the night allowing myself to feel crappy and then trying to make myself feel better by reiterating all of my accomplishments over the last year and a half.  The good news is that I didn’t binge about it and the bad news is I still know that gosh darn number.