Starting: 264
Last week: 222
Current: 226

That is what you get when you spend a week in a pub eating pub food and not drinking as much water as you should because the local water is gross and you don’t have the money for buying heaps of water.

Actually, when I weighed myself Sunday morning (I got back home Saturday night), the scale said 230. But I’ve been drinking heaps of water to hydrate (I got so dehydrated that my skin got itchy), so that probably has something to do with it.

However, the bounce down in the scale brings up something Jenera and I were talking about that I wanted to talk about here: scales.

There was some sort of blogger movement earlier this year during which a lot of health bloggers I read gave up their scales for good. A rare few kept fast, defending their scales, but most cursed the things and threw them out the door.

Frankly, I am understanding the decision to chuck the thing more and more.

From about late August to the end of 2009, I stayed the same weight. Yet, lo and behold, the next time I measured, I’d lost five inches (between biceps, thighs, hips, waist, boobs). But I’ve known for a long time that you should not go just by the scale for shows of improvement.

What really hit me, though, was coming home, seeing 230 on the scale, and shrugging. No longer did the number seem so important. I was dehydrated and I’d eaten pub food (delicious and non-fried, but still rich) for a week. Plain and simple. I knew that at least half the pounds I had gained while away would disappear once I got my body hydrated.

And it was in that moment that I knew I’d moved past letting the scale dictate my happiness or my view of myself. Finally I had mentally and emotionally put the scale where it was meant to be.

At this point, the only reason I keep my scale is because 180 is the magic number I have to get to before my husband and I start trying for a baby. Some days I hate that number with a passion (why not start trying at 200? It’s bound to take a while…) and some days it’s a good goal. But truly, that is the only reason I keep the scale.

Do you still have your scale?