The Numbers Game

How do you measure your worth?

Photo by Anoushka Puri on Unsplash

Numbers have been my mortal enemies since I was a child.

Don’t get me wrong: I was always good at math. Aside from calculus, which I dropped in my senior year of high school because it wasn’t a requirement for graduation, and physics, which made me want to bang my head against a wall, math always came easily to me.

As a child, I could perform mental math equations at lightning speed. At the age of twelve, I memorized 330 digits of Pi in six weeks. Everyone in my class thought I was insane, but to this day it’s still one of my proudest accomplishments.

My problem wasn’t an inability to work with numbers. Though I often doubted my mathematical abilities, I always managed to master those formulas eventually and consistently came out at the top of my class.

My struggle was my relationship with numbers. As early as elementary school, I developed an unhealthy habit of finding my worth in various numbers.

I constantly defined myself by numbers, but no matter how hard I tried to measure up, somehow I always came up short.

It started with report cards. To this day, I can still remember the thrill of receiving those crisp, white envelopes with my name printed on them. Inside were freshly printed pieces of paper with little rows of boxes and columns of numbers . . . . always in the high 90s. I relished comparing my grades with those of my classmate and academic rival Daniel. I must have annoyed that poor boy to no end with my obsessive competitiveness, for even at the tender age of eight, it wasn’t enough for me just to score well. I had to score the best.

Sadly, report card season was one of the few times in my childhood when I felt celebrated . . .

Outside of school, I often felt like a disappointment. For reasons I couldn’t understand, my mother often seemed angry with me, and my father was always quicker to reprimand than he was to praise.

As a kid, I couldn’t understand the dynamics of my parents’ unhealthy marriage or its impact on our home life. All I knew was that if I made straight A’s at the end of the school year, I would get a present, a DQ ice cream cake, and a big, happy smile from my mom. It was the best part of the year, second only to Christmas.

B+ Means You’re Failing, Right?

During high school, grades became increasingly important to me. Every year, as my courses got harder, I placed more and more emphasis on my academic performance.

It didn’t help that my high school publically awarded the highest-performing students in each class with special certificates adorned with gold or silver stickers and copies of the president’s signature.

I lived for those year-end ceremonies when I could walk the stage at least half a dozen times, proudly receiving my certificates to the sound of applause. My high-school best friend and I were in healthy competition with one another from ninth grade onward. If he didn’t take first place in a subject, I would, and vice versa. I didn’t mind taking second place to him because he was my best friend, but God forbid anyone else should beat me!

Sadly, this obsession with my grades robbed me of the joy of learning. I couldn’t celebrate a 99% on a final exam because I was too busy bemoaning that one lost mark. If I scored less than 95%, I believed I was “struggling” and needed to work harder. If—heaven forbid—I scored less than 90% . . .

I couldn’t score less than 90%—that would be failing!

Laugh if you will, but this was my line of thinking, and it was rapidly destroying my mental health.

How Few Calories Can a Girl Survive On?

Unfortunately, grades weren’t the only numbers that wreaked havoc on my life. Around the age of twelve, I also developed a serious eating disorder that persisted all through high school and into university.

Let me be very clear: At the age of eleven, I weighed 165 pounds, which is not a healthy body weight for a pre-pubescent child. I legitimately needed to lose weight.

The problem was that I didn’t know when to stop losing weight. Nor did I understand that the true objective of weight loss is enjoying a healthy, well-balanced life. All I knew was that I was fat and my mom would not be happy with me until I wasn’t.¹

“You need to lose weight, Allana. You’re too heavy.”

This message was drilled into my head so often from the time I was nine years old that when those excess pounds finally started to drop off in middle school, I didn’t know when I was “allowed” to stop.

By the age of fourteen, my weight settled at 140 pounds, which was a healthy size for my 5’5” frame, but I thought I had to keep pushing until I reached 120 pounds or less.

In my twisted, numbers-oriented mindset, my worth hinged upon some low, elusive number.

This preoccupation with the ever-changing number on the scale morphed into a full-blown eating disorder. Heartbreakingly, I didn’t recognize my disorder for what it was because my weight kept fluctuating—sometimes I was a “healthy” weight, sometimes I wasn’t, but since I was never seriously underweight, I didn’t see my problem clearly.

I wasn’t sick. I was just failing.

Like my preoccupation with my grades, this obsession with weight loss robbed me of immeasurable joy. I was so busy counting calories, reps, inches, and pounds that I missed out on countless precious moments with my friends and family.

The numbers game was supposed to bring me a sense of value. Instead, it left me feeling miserable and worthless.

What is the Measure of A Life Well Lived?

As an adult, I have learned the futility of these numbers games. Grades, scales, and calorie counting are things of the past. I haven’t weighed myself since 2019, and I have no desire to ever do so again. Quite frankly, I don’t give a rip about the number on the scale anymore. I’d rather be eating a homemade sourdough bagel.

But breaking free from my obsession with numbers was not an easy process. I didn’t stop caring about grades until I started my MFA (because who cares about test scores when you’re writing short stories all day every day?). The same goes for my weight. I was twenty-four years old before I finally made peace with my body and learned to love it, flaws and all. I know I’ll never be 135 pounds again. But who cares? My body is strong, beautiful, and resilient, and I’m thankful for it.

There are still days I catch myself pulling out the old mental measuring tape—only now, instead of test scores or calories, it’s the figures on my paystub or the likes on my Instagram posts that get the anxiety churning in my stomach.

When I catch myself comparing my wealth, popularity, or success with other people’s, I have to stop and remind myself that none of it matters.

My worth is not contingent upon a single number. Life is so much more than wins and losses or a series of digits. At the end of the day, my value is not determined by the measures of societal expectations or the scales of prestige. In the eyes of God, I am infinitely loved and indescribably valuable.

Because the numbers game has been such a significant battle for me, I want to spend more time unpacking these profound truths in the weeks to come. Over the next few publications, I will dive deeper into my battle against an eating disorder, my struggle to break free from a numbers-based identity, and my journey to joy and liberation.

If you want to read more about finding freedom from the numbers game, subscribe to my free newsletter and get my posts sent straight to your inbox!

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Gal. 5:1 NIV)

1. For the record: my mother and I have worked through the lies and multigenerational trauma that contributed to my disordered eating. As a result of hard conversations and lots of forgiveness, our relationship is now stronger than ever.

The memories, descriptions, and anecdotes in this post are intended to encapsulate my experience of growing up in a dysfunctional family that struggled in their relationship with food.