The break

The scale goes in the cupboard, and it goes today, not after a last reading. A last reading is a mark, and the break starts with a mark unless you refuse it one. Put it somewhere that takes a small effort to get at. Under the sink behind the cleaning things, or on top of the wardrobe. Not the bin. You may want it back, on new terms, and you should have the choice.

The first week is the hard one, and it's hard in a specific way. The habit will present itself at ten past seven as a small blank where the number used to be, and the blank will feel like not knowing, and not knowing will feel like the fear from chapter 7. You'll find yourself, in the shower, doing the sum in your head. Curry last night, probably up. You may find your hand going to the mat. Notice it and go and put the kettle on. The blank is what a morning is without a number in it. It's not a gap in your knowledge. It's a gap in your surveillance, and those are different things.

The second week, the blank gets smaller. The evening meal stops being an entry in tomorrow's ledger, because there's no ledger tomorrow, and you may notice that you're eating a bit more like someone who's hungry and a bit less like someone paying something off. Breakfast happens because it's morning. The jeans go on or don't according to the weather.

By the third and fourth week, for many readers, the morning has been given back. That's the thing to notice, and it's worth writing down at the end of the month in one sentence, because it's what you're weighing the scale against. Not your weight. Your mornings.

Two things to expect that aren't pleasant. One is that, somewhere in the month, you'll be certain you've gained, and you'll have no way to check, and that will feel intolerable for about a day. That's the fear doing what fear does when it's denied its ritual, and chapter 7 argued that the ritual was never holding anything. Wait it out. The other is that clothes may start to do the scale's job, and chapter 22 has a case about that.

At the end of four weeks, you decide. Some readers leave the scale in the cupboard and never think about it again. Some bring it out for a weigh day, chapter 18, with a notebook and a rule, and find that after a month off they can read the number as a number. Some bring it out, step on, feel the old swing arrive in full, and put it straight back, having learned what they needed to. All three are good outcomes. What none of them is, is the daily step with the daily mood, and that was the point.