You Can't Heal a Body You Hate

Why the number on your scale is the least useful thing you can track

Author

Erika Muralidhar
August 04, 2026

This morning my husband and I were talking on the way to the gym. He asked me something I get asked a lot: how do I actually track progress with my clients when it comes to weight? Because so many of the women who come to me are doing everything right and the scale is still not moving the way they want it to.

Here is my honest answer. I don't use the scale. If you are someone who needs a coach who tracks your weight on a scale, I am probably not your person. And I want to tell you why, because it is not just a preference. It is science.

A scale gives you one number. That is it. That number changes based on how much water you drank, how much stress you are carrying, what you ate, where you are in your cycle, whether you slept. It shifts constantly, and it tells you almost nothing meaningful about what is actually happening in your body. And if you really want data, a scale only gives you a small piece of the equation. What it cannot tell you is whether that number went up because of fat or because you are building muscle. For that, you need a body composition test or a DEXA scan. Otherwise you are making decisions based on an incomplete picture.

What I track instead is how you feel. How your clothes fit. How you are walking into a room. Because here is what I know: women who feel good in their bodies carry themselves differently. There is a confidence there. And that confidence is not just emotional. It is physiological.

When you feel good about your body, your cortisol stays lower. When you hate what you see, or you are in a constant spiral about the number on the scale, your cortisol goes up. And high cortisol tells your body it is under threat. It signals that resources might be scarce, that something dangerous might be coming. So your body does what it is designed to do. It holds on. It stores. It protects. The shame spiral you are in about your weight is actually one of the reasons your weight is not moving. Your body is not broken. It is responding exactly the way a body under chronic stress responds.

This is why the first thing I teach women is not a food plan or a workout routine. It is how to reconnect to their body. How to find some peace with it. How to start to appreciate it, even the parts they have spent years at war with.

I know what that war feels like. I went through my own eating disorder and came out the other side having to completely relearn my relationship with my body. I had to learn how to love it again, even the parts I used to pick apart. And what helped me was not trying to love everything at once. It was finding smaller things to be grateful for. My feet that carry me where I want to go. My eyes that let me see the people I love. My body that shows up for me every single day even when I have not been kind to it.

That is where the healing starts. Not with the number on the scale, but with the relationship with yourself.

Because the truth is you cannot out-discipline hatred. You cannot restrict and punish your way to a body you feel at home in. The women I see make the most sustainable change are not the ones who finally found the right plan. They are the ones who stopped being at war with themselves first.

If you are tired of the scale running your mood, your week, your self-worth, I want you to try something different. For one week, put it away. Check in with how you feel instead. How your energy is. How your clothes fit. How you are showing up. That information will tell you so much more than a number ever could.

And if you want to do this work more deeply, come find us inside the F the Hustle Collective. This is exactly what we talk about in there. Link below.

Also, a little news: I just got certified in vision boarding. If you've been thinking about hosting a vision board party or bringing something meaningful to a corporate event, I'd love to be your person. Drop me a message!

Services I offer:

Reply

or to participate.