living with, not by, the numbers

Lately, I've been pondering the whole Two Pound Variance idea proposed by the WW system. The basic idea is that you choose a goal weight, and as long as you're within 2 pounds of that, you're successfully on maintenance.

I've been thinking about how that 2 pound range is, in my opinion, a limited target. I've also been thinking about how we live by these somewhat arbitrary numbers-- we set these goal weights and limits and then expect our bodies to comply. We work terribly hard, and when we succeed we feel a certain sense of pleasure, even subdued euphoria. When we don't meet the numbers, it can feel like failure, powerlessness, an out-of-control-ness that's enough to make us despair and/or give up entirely.

I keep track of my weight online and in a spreadsheet. What I've seen in this is all the various numbers that auto-fill from memory. When I went to type in 172.4 this morning, it appeared in the drop-down menu for that box. I have experienced 172.4 before. In fact, I get a strange kick out of hitting a weight that I haven't been before (regardless of it being "over" my goal weight or not). When that happens, I think that my body has visited some new territory-- that I've expanded the depth of my experience, that I'm more fully exploring the subtleties of this weight range in which I exist.

We are not numbers. We are fluid, changing, as variant as the weather, the air, the water. I've fallen prey to living by numbers over and over again. This morning, at my weigh in, which was down from last week but still up from my "goal"-- I looked at the scale and thought:

I can live with this. This is reasonable.

I don't need to feel like I've failed because I'm not at or below that magical number I chose however many years ago. And I don't want to choose a new number and then have those three digits looming over me. So it's gotta be more relaxed than that, based on my whole life, not just that moment when I set my body onto a device that reads my weight and displays a value (that has nothing to do with my value).

I still need guidelines. I still have a "range" in mind that to me, connotes health and fitness and that ever-elusive (to me at least) sense of fashion-ease. But that doesn't come down to one number, or a two-pound range. It comes down to engagement, to self-compassion, to loving who I am day to day, even with my flaws and variations.