I’ve had a very back-and-forth relationship with scales.

I have dieted. I’ve succeeded in dieting. Early this year I lost almost 20 pounds. I used the scale and a calorie-counting website to help me do this. It was simple math: calories in < calories out = less mass.

At other points, I’ve avoided the scale and lived based on how I felt. Were my clothes fitting differently? Did I feel or look differently? If so, I would begin a rather organic process of trying to move more, eat less. Or I’d try to eat better, packing small baggies of green vegetables and cubes of cheese to combat hunger and the dreaded “work munchies.” I’ve tried to live in a manner that was sustainable over the long run; either by understanding that I needed to make better choices, or understanding that I needed a prescribed amount of exercise to stay at a weight mark.

Being pregnant has, naturally, changed all of this. It no longer makes sense to calorie count (nor is it safe!) and I thought that obsessively weighing myself would only lead to negative self-confidence and self-image. So I stopped weighing in. For the first 3 months + I felt so terribly that I allowed myself to do, or eat, whatever I felt that I needed to survive. I knew that if I stopped eating, or if I were to eat the wrong foods, I would throw up. Intuitively, I began to find foods that worked for me, and I allowed myself to eat them. This felt right. I decided that, as many thousands of years as humans have been having children, it made perfect sense that my body should know what it wants and needs. I let this guide me into the second trimester, when food started to sound better and I could once again eat healthier foods. I let this idea guide me into once again eating cereal, figuring I probably needed the calcium from the milk I was craving. As the second trimester spanned on, I started to crave a lot of things. I valiantly began to ignore the unhealthy ideas and tried to keep myself from getting really hungry. There were a few times that I thought I was going a little overboard, but for the most part I felt pretty good. I felt like I looked mostly the same (overall, aside from the stomach) and was proud of myself. This week, before my last appointment, Josh gave me a wonderful compliment. He told me I’ve done really well at not just eating everything in sight, and that he was really proud of me. 

Well that was pre-appointment. Now, having received a lecture about the amount of weight I gained in the past month, I suppose I’m not doing so well without a scale. I’m really disappointed. I spent the last couple of days being mad at myself and feeling badly, but then I thought: I have really grown a lot in the past month (as you’ve seen on this post). In the previous months, the progress seemed only noticeable by me, but now I feel like I am looking noticeably different every day. I would imagine, rationally, that this would also translate to some weight gain. According to my doctor, it should not have been any different from the previous months (2-3 pounds). According to my Mayo Clinic book, it’s 1 pound per week (4-5 pounds). Either way, my bubble of acceptance and calm popped and I thought “am I doing this wrong?”

My all accounts, I don’t feel fat, and I don’t feel that I look fat. I look pregnant. I keep getting compliments from people that I look “the same, aside from the belly,” which do lead me to believe I’m doing pretty good. I’m disappointed that I can’t continue trying to eat right, occasionally indulging, and overall listening to what my body wants and obeying that. Really disappointed.

But then I think…so many woman have so many different experiences with pregnancy, including the physical reactions of their bodies…why would this be different with weight gain? How do I know that what I have gained is (more or less…maybe a bit more in my case) not what my body needed these past few weeks? I have seen women who look huge right away, or those who stay very small until the end. In both cases, people are very cruel. I have heard comments like the ever-popular “are you sure you aren’t having TWINS?!” to “are you eating enough? The baby can’t be healthy!” When people attempt to compliment a pregnant woman by telling her she looks thin, it’s going to be taken poorly. We aren’t supposed to be thin. We’re supposed to be round! So telling her that she looks thin is the equivalent of saying “you don’t know how to take care of your unborn child. You are depriving him/her of nutrients…” I think of things like this and I wonder what was ever wrong with avoiding the scale and allowing my own body to be my guide. After all, I am the world’s expert on my body, having spent the most time in it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Are we fooling ourselves in thinking that our bodies know what they need, and therefore giving in to temptation when it is not warranted? Are we overburdening ourselves by holding on to unrealistic standards and counting our progress using numbers that are not one-size-fits-all? Is there room for understanding of variety of ways in which a body adapts to pregnancy in the prescribed amounts we are told to strive for? Or are we (am I) ignoring our better judgement and giving in to a social and cultural idea that the pregnant woman is a voracious monster?