I think I'm in an abusive relationship with my scale.

    It all started, well my whole life. Early on in my youth I turned to food for comfort, and we all know how that usually ends up. So fast forward some years and here I am in my early 30s terrified of the monster hiding in my bathroom closet.
    In March of this year I ended up losing my job, since then I've been in kind of a tailspin. I've never been unemployed before, and having what you thought was a great opportunity in your career suddenly end in a crushing pile of tears and regret (as you can see I'm taking it well) has added a great deal of stress to my life. I have always been the one who focused on my job/education, well cause face it, I wasn't the thin girl, so I had to be the smart girl. Finding myself in a precarious position of no job, and not being able to find a new one, I was sinking deeper and deeper.
    I had been an on again off again runner in the last year, I would do it for a couple months then stop. This winter I had accepted a new job which involved a longer commute and more hours at a desk, and I had packed on the pounds. When I stopped talking to my scale in January, I was at 196. Mind you I'm a whole 5'1", so that's a lot of weight on a small frame. I got very good at pretending not to notice none of my clothes fit me. Fast forward to March, and my life altering day. After a few weeks of being utterly shell shocked and shut down, a friend of mine apparently noticed. She invited me to do some volunteer work for an organization that puts on race events. And I started to remember why I had always gone back to running over the years. It made me feel strong.
    I am back to running now, I have put in over 200 miles since February. I am training for my first half-marathon in October, I have a few 5ks and a 10k coming up. I was doing pretty well at recovering some of my self-worth up until a couple weeks ago. I got on the scale for the first time in 4 months. I almost cried. All the work I had done, all the training, and I had lost only 3lbs. I can't even delude myself that my clothes are fitting better, cause frankly my jeans are still pretty tight (better than they were though). Demoralized doesn't begin to describe my emotions. I would love to say that I could just go out and buy supplements and all organic food and produce, but I'm broke. I'm barely scraping by, and I can't even afford to drive to the gym anymore. I hate that this is so hard for me, and with others it seems like the pounds just melt off effortlessly. I hate that I let myself get to this weight in the first place. Most of all I just hate this constant feeling of being a failure in my life.
    So now I am going out for a run, because right now, this is the only thing keeping me together.