Jessica Simpson wants women of all ages to know you are more than a number on the scale.
Following the success of her best-selling memoir Open Book, the mother of three teamed up with Amazon Original Stories to release an original essay titled Take the Lead.
Available for free to Prime Members and Kindle Unlimited subscribers, the personal writing project explores Jessica's public journey with her weight and why she ultimately decided to throw out her scale.
Three weeks before welcoming her now 2-year-old daughter Birdie, Jessica recalled stepping on the scale and discovering she "weighed more than my husband [Eric Johnson], a six-foot-three former tight end in the NFL." The singer and actress said she sat on the tub and burst into tears.
"Here I was, creating life, this miracle baby that we didn't expect but welcomed because we knew she was exactly who we needed to complete our family," she wrote. "My heart literally beat for hers. I looked down at my belly, which was all I could see back then anyway, then over to the scale. ‘This,' I said aloud, ‘is not right.'"
At that moment, Jessica decided to take control and give the scale less power on her life.
"I carried that darn thing downstairs, put it in a trash bag and brought it right to the garage," she recalled. "‘Goodbye,' I told the scale. ‘I don't care if you're broken. I'm not.'"
Despite all of her success as a wife, mother, entertainer and businesswoman, the 40-year-old author still gets pitched weight-loss interviews. But if a reporter ever asks how much weight she lost, Jessica likely won't be able to answer.
"The truth is I don't know, because I threw out my scale," she wrote in Take the Lead. "It's part of the work on myself that continues. I am still finding things to let go of, and one of the more meaningful releases has been the scale."
Hear more from Jessica in her personal essay available April 29.