Measuring yourself with scales

I had a long talk with my best guy buddy in the UK today, and we got on the subject of weight. He owns a women's gym, so is particularly interested in/curious about my struggle with weight. Professionally as well as in the friend role.

He said it was funny because for the first four years he knew me - when I was living in London and New York, he didn't think I was sensitive about my weight, and I didn't seem like a big girl. Granted, I was about 30 pounds lighter then, mostly because I walked everywhere. He said it was only when I moved to Middle America, and now LA, that he saw that I was sensitive about it.

I was thinking about it recently anyway, because I really miss who I was in London. I was always doing new things and said "yes" to everything that came my way. I was trying to think about why I don't do that anymore, and here's what I've come up with, in part...

In the UK, and Europe, and most of the rest of the world, I guess, there is a Stereotypical American which generally figures something like this - they're fat, wear bad clothes, have fanny packs, the men wear shorts with their dark socks pulled up to their knees, and white sneakers. And they're always always always fat. So when I was in the UK, I was kind of like, "Well, I'm supposed to be fat, I'm American, it's what people expect of me, so I'm not going to worry about it because it's just the way it's supposed to be and I'm not nearly as bad as I could be, so I'm already a step or two ahead."

But here I don't have that measurement to reassure me. I can't play the American who's a notch above the sterotype. So I revert back to being insecure and covering myself up and not going to the belly dancing class I really want to go to.

It was funny because earlier in the conversation he told me that I should start using a measuring tape to track progress rather than a scale, especially if I'm exercising a lot. Then during this part he said, "it's funny because you're measuring yourself on some scale that exists in your head, but isn't really real. It's just a made up scale." And I was like, "man, I've got to stop using scales for everything."

So I don't know. I still don't think I'm going to go to a belly dancing class until about 20 pounds from now, but I should start finding other things to base my judgments of myself on, I guess. It was an interesting thing to think about, anyway.