I have not broken up with my scale. I’ve just realized we may not be right for each other at the moment, so we’re taking some time apart.

For four years now—maybe five, honestly I’m not sure at this point how long—I’ve been trying to lose weight. And I have. I started this journey at 247 lbs, and that was clearly too heavy for a 40-something, 5’9” male. I hover around 188 lbs now, which is an accomplishment.

But I want more.

Somewhere on this journey, I decided the magic number was 170 lbs. No one told me that, and honestly, my doctor was very dubious at best about that number. But that’s my goal, and I’m not one to drop something once I start. Yet here we are, 4, maybe 5 years later, and I’m just not there. Every time I step on the scale, I think, “What’s the point?”

Here’s what 188 lbs or 191 lbs or whatever it is this week does not tell anyone… I feel great. I mean, I’m 47 and still have a questionable back and knees. I have mild sleep apnea (which my wife says has improved), but overall I feel great. It’s been a long time since I could say that. One year ago I was still wearing XL shirts, and they were tight. Now I wear a large, and they are getting looser every day. My face is thinner, and I sleep pretty close to 8 hours a night, which has never happened in my life. My resting heart rate is around 60 bpm; it was around 95 when I started this journey. I run 3 days a week (crazy slow, but I try). I no longer have high blood pressure. I do not get winded when I pick up my kids and play with them or break out in a sweat walking up stairs. And my questionable back and knees hurt less.

So why am I not satisfied with that? I’m not sure. Well, that’s not true either. I do know, I just do not like the answer.

Because the goal is 170 lbs, and it was not an arbitrary number when I picked it. I don’t know that for sure, but I suspect I saw someone who “looked” how I want to look at some point and found out they weighed 170 lbs. I have a bad habit of judging my insides by other people’s outsides.

And who knows, maybe that person does feel great. I’m not even sure who they are or where.

What I do know is, it does not matter. The most important thing I’ve learned on this journey is that judging someone else will not make me skinnier; it will not make me healthier or stronger. And isn’t that what I’m doing when I say I need to look like that person—judging them based on how they look? What matters is that I put in the work and that I do it for me, not anyone else, not even my scale.

So my scale and I are seeing other people. It may not be permanent, but for now, it’s better this way.

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If you want to know more about how I ended up here doing what I do, maybe check out the book: Fragmented

~ Ryan