Because... the scale is an ally of my food addiction. In the past when I have tried to lose weight, I would get discouraged when the scale didn't move downward, thinking "But I'm eating less and/or exercising more, why isn't the scale going down? Or why isn't it going down faster?" Then I would get discouraged and give up, and eat (read: overeat).
Or, I would check the scale and see a good loss and think, "Great! So I can sneak in a nice buffet meal and it'll be okay to indulge now!" Uh, no. So obviously this lead to a cycle of the weight bouncing up and down. Not a helpful cycle.
When I became abstinent, I had just found a sponsor who is also very open in meetings about having "insanity" about the scale. This is one of the reasons I chose her as my sponsor: I knew she would understand.
So when I started out in my abstinence I knew that for the strength of my recovery, especially in the beginning when I'm more vulnerable to relapse, it would be very important NOT to be weighing in all the time.
The 6 week no-weighing has been great for me so far (I'm at the end of week 3 now). There is definitely a curiosity to check the scale. I'll admit when I visited my dad for Christmas (in the middle of my second week of abstinence) I actually did try to use his scale, but because I'm so heavy it just gave an Error message. ;)
I've also had a few times at the gym when I was very tempted to weigh-in but didn't, reminding myself that I made a commitment to ME for my OWN SAKE not to do it. Would it ruin everything if I did weigh in? Well I hope not, but I also know that, though I feel so much stronger than I did when I first began my abstinence, I still have a long way (my whole lifetime) left to go and I don't want to shoot myself in the ankle just when I'm getting started.
But regardless of not knowing the number on the scale, I do know that my body is changing. My clothes feel different. My body looks and feels different. My fitness level is improved (I can walk up the hill to the street I live on with ease when before I had to take several huffing, puffing breaks). I really don't even need the scale to verify that my weight is dropping, because I can SEE and FEEL that my body is smaller.
These changes are all so much more tangible anyway than the number on the scale, which can vary due to the time of the month (read: bloating!), how much water is in my system, how much muscle I've been building or not building, whether or not I've had a BM that day, the time of the day, etc.
So for my sanity, weighing once a month or less is helpful for my recovery. Being in Overeaters Anonymous is not primarily about weight loss. That is not my goal. My goal is to be relieved of the insanity of bingeing and eating past fullness; the compulsion to snack for no reason, or for any reason; the devil on my shoulder that convinces me I'm *hungry* and need to go through a drive-thru on the way home because I'm obviously WAY too hungry to have the strength to prepare myself food at home, which is all a lie because I'm not hungry in the first place.
I must say though, the physical changes I'm experiencing are nice. And it is a nice confirmation that I really am eating less. So many times before I've tried to convince myself I was eating less when really, calories accounted for overall, I wasn't. One of my OA sisters puts it best: "How is it that we are the ones telling ourselves these lies, and we're also the ones believing those same lies?"
Haha. Ah, addiction.
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