I Always End Up Back On The Scales

You lasted six days last time.

Not six days of moving. Six days before the other thing came back. You started walking again on the Monday, you felt reasonably good about it, and on the Sunday morning you found yourself standing on a scale in a bathroom you had deliberately not been standing in.

And then whatever the number said decided everything.

If it had gone down, you would have been pleased for about two hours and then it would have become the point, and every walk after that would have been an installment paid toward it. If it had not moved, or had gone the wrong way, you would have felt the specific flatness of having done something for nothing, and you would have gone out less that week and not at all the week after.

Either way, the walking stopped being about walking.

This is the only article on this site that mentions weight at all, and I am mentioning it in order to get it out of the room.

Everywhere else here, it does not come up. Not as a goal, not as an aside, not as a reassurance. That is deliberate, and it is not squeamishness, and it is not because your weight is a forbidden subject or a shameful one. It is because of what putting it in a room does to everything else in that room.

The moment the number is present, every physical thing you do becomes a transaction with it. The walk is no longer a walk, it is a payment. And a payment expects a return, and when the return does not come you stop paying, which is exactly what has happened to you every single time.

That is not a failure of willpower. It is what happens to anything that gets attached to a number you do not control.

Man looketh on the outward appearance

There is a correction God gives a prophet about measurement, and it is worth reading as being about measuring rather than about looks.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature.

Now notice the second one, because people always quote the first. The height of his stature. That is a measurement. It is the one thing in that scene that could be stated as a number, and it is named specifically as the thing not to look at.

And notice who is being corrected. Samuel. A prophet, doing his job carefully, using the best available information. He was not being shallow. He was using a measurable quantity because a measurable quantity is what a serious person uses when they want to be objective.

That is precisely why he got it wrong.

The correction is not that measurement is sinful. It is that the measurable thing was the wrong thing, and that its being measurable is exactly what made it so persuasive.

Your scale is the height of Eliab's stature. It is the one part of this that produces a number, and so it has taken over the whole business, not because it is the most important part but because it is the only part that can be stated precisely.

You are able to stop taking the one measurement that offered itself, and its being measurable has never once made it the right thing to look at. First Samuel 16:7 names the measurable quantity as the thing not to look on, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a number out of the middle of somebody's life.

A reason that cannot be taken away

Here is the practical part, and it is about finding a different reason.

You need a reason to move that the scale cannot revoke.

Because the reason you have been using can be revoked, weekly, by a set of bathroom scales, and a reason like that will never survive a bad month.

So here are reasons that cannot. They are unglamorous and that is the point.

Because this body is yours and it is the only one and using it is what it is for. Because you sleep differently on days you have been outside. Because your head is quieter for about two hours afterward. Because your daughter sees you go out of the door. Because you like the particular corner where the road turns and you can see across.

Notice that not one of those can be checked on a Sunday morning. There is no instrument that says whether they happened. They are either true or they are not, and no number gets a vote.

That is what makes them durable. A reason that can be measured can be disproved, and once it is disproved it stops working. A reason that cannot be measured cannot be taken off you by anything.

And you will notice something else about that list. Every item on it is about today. None of it is about a future version of you that will exist if this works. That is not an accident, because a reason located in the future can always be postponed, and a reason located in today is available at half past four this afternoon.

You are able to move for a reason nothing can revoke, and a reason that can be measured has never once survived being disproved. The written word refuses the measurable quantity and looks at the heart instead, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives a person a reason that no instrument can take.

Move it out of the room

So here is the assignment, and it is physical rather than mental, which is on purpose.

Move the scale out of the room you weigh yourself in, for one week.

Not throw it away. I am not asking you to make a statement, and a decision made in a strong moment about throwing something away usually gets reversed by Thursday.

Just move it. Into a cupboard, into the garage, under the stairs, to the back of a wardrobe. Somewhere that requires a deliberate act to get to.

One week.

The reason this works is that the standing on it is not really a decision. You do not weigh up whether to. You are in that room anyway, it is on the floor anyway, and you are on it before anything has been thought. It is proximity rather than intention.

So do not fight the intention. Change the geography.

And do not tell yourself you are giving it up. You are moving an object for seven days, which is small enough that you will actually do it, and if at the end of the week you want it back, put it back.

What you are buying is one week in which the walking is only walking. That is all this is for.

You are able to change where an object sits, and the standing on it has never once been a decision that intention could reach. First Samuel 16:7 sets aside the measurable and looks elsewhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman carrying a set of scales out to a cupboard.