You’ve started unraveling food rules. Maybe you’re ready to end the war with your body and explore a healthier relationship with food. My work with dancers focuses on dismantling dieting behaviors, especially the sneaky “clean eating” lifestyles that disguise restriction as wellness. As a dietitian, I don’t prescribe rigid rules around what, when, or how much dancers should eat.
But there is one guideline I consistently encourage:
Get off the scale.
Stopping body weighing sounds simple. In reality, it can feel incredibly hard. Diet culture normalizes tracking behaviors such as daily weighing, calorie counting, macro tracking, and food journaling. Wellness culture often reframes these same habits as tools for “self-awareness” or “body trust.” Strip away the buzzwords and biohacking claims, and we’re left with the same dieting strategies that push dancers to rely on external data instead of internal body wisdom.
So here’s the question: do we actually need these surveillance tools to stay “on track?” And if not, how do dancers evaluate whether their habits are supportive? Let’s talk about it.
Why Dancers Need to Ditch the Scale
There are many reasons dancers benefit from stepping away from the scale. First, body weight alone does not define health or performance potential. Dieting fails the vast majority of the time, with most people regaining lost weight within just six months. More importantly, dieting is one of the strongest risk factors for eating disorders. Even the small percentage who maintain weight loss often rely on behaviors that mirror eating disorder symptoms.
Body weight is also influenced by countless factors that live outside your control. Hydration shifts. Hormone fluctuations. Digestive regularity. Muscle development. Genetics. Access to resources. Stress. Sleep. The list goes on.
Your body has a natural range where it functions best. This is often called your set point range. It’s pre-determined genetically and largely influenced by more than just diet and lifestyle, reflecting a weight your body can maintain without rigidity, restriction, or compulsive exercise.
Trying to live below that range is not a willpower issue. It’s a biological tug-of-war that your body will eventually fight to escape.
So here’s the bottom line: the number on the scale tells you very little about your health, your worth, or your performance potential. Yet the behaviors tied to chasing a certain number can place dancers at significant risk for physical, mental, and emotional harm.
When the Scale Can Be a Clinical Tool
Sometimes the scale has a role within treatment. In the context of eating disorder recovery or intentional weight restoration, weight monitoring may be used as a clinical tool under the guidance of a registered dietitian and mental health professional. In these situations, the goal is safety and stabilization. The number may help evaluate whether weight gain is progressing at a medically appropriate pace, or it may be used intentionally within exposure therapy when a dancer experiences intense anxiety around seeing their weight. The purpose is not body control, thinness, or self-judgment. It is targeted therapeutic support used within a structured plan.
Outside of these supervised settings, routine self-weighing is far more likely to cause harm than help.
The Fear Behind Letting Go of Tracking
Tracking behaviors can provide a powerful illusion of control. For many dancers, numbers feel like proof that a plan is “working.” The thought of letting go can feel frightening, especially if you believe tracking prevents chaos around food or changes in body size.
But the comfort offered by the scale or a calorie log is temporary. Over time, these habits shrink your world. They heighten anxiety. They disconnect you from your internal cues. And they increase the likelihood of disordered eating patterns.
The truth: tracking comes with risks.
Body Checking: Subtle but Harmful
Body checking includes weighing, measuring, mirror fixing, pinching, and frequent body comparison. These habits are strongly associated with body dissatisfaction and eating disorders.
Body checking may not cause immediate physical harm, but the psychological impact is real. It increases the urge to restrict. It fuels obsessive thoughts. It shifts your focus away from internal cues like hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. Over time, it erodes body trust.
Replace the Scale with Curiosity
Your body is designed to regulate itself when it’s consistently nourished. When you allow your body to settle within its natural range, appetite signals become more predictable and easier to honor. This helps you fuel proactively for classes and rehearsals instead of reacting to extreme hunger or fatigue.
So How Do Dancers Stay “On Track?”
Start by redefining the goal.
Diet culture frames food monitoring as a pathway to shrinking or controlling the body. Orthorexic thinking adds another layer, moralizing food choices in the name of health. Both approaches require constant vigilance and leave little room for flexibility or joy.
Instead, imagine a relationship with food that supports your life and your dancing. One grounded in nourishment, trust, and compassion. Here’s an article to help you envision exactly this.
Build Your “Body of Evidence”
Evidence matters. But instead of relying on numbers, we look to lived experience.
Many dancers who reflect on their dieting history recognize a clear pattern: restriction eventually leads to feeling out of control. Awareness of this pattern becomes a powerful motivator to let go of body checking and tracking behaviors. Click here to learn more about building The Healthy Dancer® Body of Evidence.
Food journaling can sometimes be helpful temporarily as part of intuitive exploration, working to identify hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. But the goal is always to transition away from reliance on external tools and toward self-trust. Ultimately, eating in a way that supports true energy balance.
15 Signs You’re Making Progress Without the Scale
Here are supportive ways to evaluate progress:
- You notice hunger cues throughout the day.
- You consistently fuel your body, even on busy rehearsal days.
- You can identify comfortable fullness.
- Meals feel more mindful and less rushed.
- Food feels less obsessive.
- Your mood no longer depends on the scale.
- You see food as neutral, not moral.
- Grazing decreases because meals are satisfying.
- You can keep previously “off limits” foods at home without fear.
- You experience less guilt after eating.
- You feel more confident as a dancer.
- You feel stronger in class.
- Your endurance improves, even during intense choreography.
- Movement feels supportive instead of punitive.
- You trust your body more than you trust numbers.
Key Takeaways
You deserve a relationship with food and your body that supports longevity in dance and in life. The scale cannot tell you whether you’re nourished, resilient, confident, or fulfilled. But your daily lived experience absolutely can.
Stepping away from weighing is not about giving up. It’s about choosing trust over surveillance. Curiosity over control. And compassion over criticism. Your body already knows how to care for you. Now the work is learning to listen.
