Peggie Larsen

How are you? Such a simple ask. The auto response. Fine. Always said in haste. Always said automatically. But are you really fine? Think about it. Stop going through the motions. Start really thinking. 

What if you aren’t fine? We’ve all had a rough year. I closed the doors to my brick and mortar. I lost over half of my income. Is that fine? Maybe not, but it was a choice I had to make. 

Did you have some hard choices to make this year? Think about being fine. What does that look like? My emotions and feelings have been mixed. Anxious one minute. Relaxed the next. Gaining weight one day. Losing weight another day. Eating all the food one day. Eating none of the food another day. The navigation has been hard. It’s different. It’s hard to know what is happening. It’s hard not to look to the future and be anxious about it. 

Giving thanks and having gratitude helps. Thanks for the hard. Thanks for the lessons. Thanks for the outlook. Thanks for the time. Thanks for the clarity and thanks for the fuzzy. 

Everything matters and nothing matters. It all matters or none of it matters. Right? Weird how that works. So many things we want not to matter, matter. And so many things that do matter to us, shouldn’t. We focus on things we can’t control. We don’t take the time to work on ourselves where we are. We are constantly looking down the street. We are constantly looking for help. We are wishing and hoping and what if-ing. But what if we looked at where we are with compassion and love? What if we loved ourselves for where we are and what we are right now?

We are told we should change. We are told we aren’t good enough. We are told we aren’t skinny enough. We are told we aren’t pretty enough. FOR WHO???? It’s a trap. Go to the mirror and look at yourself. Look hard. Tell yourself how you feel. Be kind. Be loving. Be compassionate. It takes a long time to get to I love me, but it’s there. It’s in there. Sometimes it’s deeply rooted and takes a long time to come out. Start unwrapping. Start saying nice things. Start looking for her. Start looking for the person you once knew. The one who is fun and carefree. The one who wants to live and enjoy life. The one who does’t care what other people think. Do this for yourself. Only you can help yourself. Nobody is coming to save you, except you. Take a step. Take action. Little by little those steps will turn into big progress. It may take a year. It may take a month. It may take two years. The time passes regardless. Start loving yourself where you are right now. Start looking into your own eyes with compassion and love. Start seeing you. Start loving you no matter what. 

The dread. The anxiety. The dread. Yes, I said dread again. I hated going there. I didn’t care what it was for. I mean, seriously, why did I have to get weighed when I had a cold. I mean come on. Why is the scale such a mindfuck? Who made me hate it? Why did I hate it? Where does that come from? The fear, the shame, and the overall self-loathing, all because of the number on a piece of equipment.

The dreaded scale. But this time I am talking about the old-fashioned kind. The sliding bar scale. I bet you know which one am talking about. The one that instills even more dread and shame and anger.

It was tall. It was massive. It was intimidating as hell. The top slider covered the pounds 1 through 50. The bottom chunky thing that landed on an increment sounded like it weighed a ton. You damn well knew when you went to the next increment and so did everyone within a 50 foot radius of the waiting room. The scale itself was heavy. Oh, I almost forgot. I was daydreaming the dread. The bottom increments were 0-50-100-150-200 and maybe more. I don’t remember for sure because I was always concerned about that number that was 150. That number meant something. That number meant that the chunky thing dropped to the next increment. The 150 increment. The horror of that increment. 

The way the scale worked was a person stepped on the platform of the scale and waited. The nurse would watch as people stripped off nearly everything they owned. Because lighter. Okay then. I will use myself as the example here. I’m sweating bullets already because we all know the doctor scale and our home scales NEVER match. I mean never. The doctor scale always has to add a little zinger for us and be up by around five pounds. It twists the knife in, just for good measure. As if, we weren’t anxious enough. 

So, I looked at the scale. Okay, deep breaths, here we go. There is another factor I needed to take into account. The human factor. The nurse factor. Her job was to stand there and take a look. A judgey look. She decided what increment to start at. Now, just a little side note, if it was me and because I know so many people have that dreaded scale anxiety, I would definitely go lower than a stupid guesstimate I had for a person. Or maybe way high to make a person feel better. It’ a crap shoot. I bet her job was not fun being the judgey one. But alas, a girl can dream. And alas, hindsight is 20/20. 

Okay then. I stepped on the scale and waited. I waited for the increment. Increment 100. Because obvious. I wouldn’t start at the 50 increment, unless I was a child. I don’t know, I was probably acting like one. She moved the top slider over to the 140 area. Nothing. Another half inch, 145. Nothing. Shit. This sucks. Another half inch, 149. Nothing. The dread started to kick in. The anxiety for sure. The steps of scale grief. Dread – Anxiety – Shame and then Anger. Anger for the push to make a change. Anger because I let myself get this way. Anger because shame, anxiety and dread.  Circle jerk of emotions and feelings. So, she keeps moving the slider, just waiting for the balance to come. The clunk of the 150 increment. Watching my face and my eyes glued to the slider. Feeling the pain of the dreaded piece of equipment that has the power over me. The power of my self worth. The power over how the rest of my day and maybe even my week and month are going to go. That is a lot of power to give to a piece of equipment. 

That was the old me. The new me knows the scale is nothing more than a tool for data. That took a while, not gonna lie. I never weigh the same on any given day, because my body changes all the time. When I track my weight, I look for patterns. As long as the scale is moving in a trend pattern that I want, or staying in a holding pattern, I know it is working. I have taken that power away from a piece of equipment. It no longer decides my worth. It no longer shames me. It no longer makes me angry. Sure, there are days when I can still feel a little bit of dread, because I am human, but I don’t let it define me. The scale path is never linear. There are ups and downs and downs and ups. It’s just the way it is. 

People are told to throw away their scales. I used to be one of those people. Not anymore. I use the scale for data. And, more importantly, I faced the scale fear. I was afraid to know what the scale said. But now, I have faced that fear. How else will you get over a fear unless you face it? I get on the scale every single morning and I track the data it gives me. That’s it. It has taken time to get to that point. The scale is powerless over me. I am the power. I had the power all along. The power to change. The power to love myself. The power to change myself. 

If I go to the doctor now, I just leave everything on. Who cares. The scale will not tell me my self-worth. Period. 

I used to believe in miracles. The fast track to fat loss kind of miracles. The ones that promise you will lose weight and feel amazing fast. The ones that tell you detox is the way to go. Before I learned about nutrition and diet, I used to believe in miracles. I got swept up in the hype just like millions of other people. The trash can fire I huddled around—that kind of hope and warmth and comfort. I didn’t want to kick that can down the street, because I wanted that can to be THE can. The one that was going to work this time. No matter how over priced and over sold and over promised, I didn’t care. I wanted desperately to lose weight or to detox something. I now know that isn’t healthy. All those things do is not work. They keep you coming back for a new can. I learned to do the work. I found sustainable fat loss. I found what works and it’s not any of those miracles. 

Here’s how that whole miracle was found in my bathroom last weekend. 

I was going through the drawers in my bathroom and I came upon one of those miracles. This particular miracle expired in 2011. I started laughing when I found it because I have seen the light. I know better now. It was a Maximum Strength Fat Burner. You know, because minimum strength does nothing. The label cracks me up. Here is what it says it is formulated to do: 

Promote Preferential loss of fat mass – what?

Encourage Lipolysis (release of fat from mature cells) – what?

Inhibit production of phosphodiesterase – what? 

And I believed. 

Exactly what it told me. 

I wanted so badly to believe. I wanted this to be the last time I needed to. As much as I wanted to believe in the magic pills, the magic potions, the detoxes and the magic ab exercises, they don’t work. The label even gave me the answer.  The label told me use in conjunction with any sensible diet and exercise program. Right there, that sentence is the answer. That was the answer I had it all along and just refused to see. It’s the answer we all refuse to see at one time or another. I didn’t want it to be that simple. I didn’t want it to be me! How could I be the one who controlled what happened to my body. 

So many of us want to believe so badly that we will try anything. We waste our money. We waste our time. When the answer is right there in front of us for us to see. The answer is to live an overall healthy lifestyle. The answer is strength training. For me it’s 3 x per week and walking every day. The answer for me is eating lots of fruits and vegetables. The answer for me is to drink lots of water and to stay hydrated. The answer for me is adequate sleep. For me it’s at least 7 hours every night. The answer for me is work on my overall health and well being, including mental health. The whole me. That is my answer. My answer works very well. 

Health is way more simple than what these products try to sell you. They sound so good. They sound so enticing. They sound too good to be true and right there, that little voice in your head,  tells us every single time. If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. 

I moved away from the miracles and took my health into my own hands instead of the hands of the diet industry. I am much happier and much healthier. I know how hard it is to break free from wanting those miracles to be THE miracle to be THE can you don’t have to kick down the street. But I stayed vigilant. I stayed consistent. I stayed present and I stayed patient. I saw results and I am still seeing results every day. 

I am not tempted by those miracles anymore. I don’t need those kinds of miracles. I stopped looking and I started seeing.