197.6: What Kinda Call Number is That?

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That's the most recent (Tuesday) reading on my scale. And I cannot believe all of the ways those digits affect(ed) me.

• I was pleased to weigh less than 200 pounds. Why? What was/is of significance about that number? I didn't even know, until then, that this was a line of demarcation I'd held and valued. What do I think is on the other side of 200? It must be my shame number, my embarrassment number. Curiously 198--just 2 pounds lighter--isn't.
  I absolutely hate that my sense of self and value can be turned on and off like a light switch by something so insignificant. And yet that is the truth for me today.
• I had the strongest urge to "double down," to "muscle" myself to faster weight loss, in spite of what I've recently learned about this form of self-betrayal and self-harm. And that, of course, is about willfulness, one of my (many) character challenges. 
• Memories of past laxative use to lose weight passed through my mind. 
• I got a surge of fear about being stuck at this weight, and that not being a good thing.

Prolonging Pleasure and Self-Betrayal

Jill Kelly is an editor and writer I have the privilege of knowing. A post from one of her blogs, Sober Truths: The Making of an Honest Woman, so resonated with me that I'm quoting most all of it here:

Today I was editing a chapter from a book in progress on child development and parenting and came across this sentence in a discussion of why using rewards and punishments with children is a bad idea. "Using rewards teaches the child that the most important thing is to prolong pleasure—even at the expense of betraying yourself."