By: Madi Harm
It’s not the number that counts.
As a college student, fitness and health are not my first priority, especially when there are mozzarella sticks at late night every night of the week. However, I have been making a conscious effort to make healthy choices and little changes here and there. Every day, I go to the gym and get intimidated by the wall of guys lifting 200 pounds with no problem when all I want is my 15 pound hand weights.
My entire life I have struggled with losing weight. I do my best, but as a current college student, my homework, papers, presentations, and clubs come first. It is an everyday struggle to find the balance and time of when to focus on school and when to put your own mental and physical health first. Throughout my year of heavily focusing on my health, I have learned a few life lessons that will improve my mental and physical health.
It took me a long time to realize that it’s not always the number that counts. By this, I mean that girls today, including myself, are obsessed with obtaining a certain weight. They will literally starve themselves and spend hours on the treadmill doing cardio in order to hit that magic number. However, you can’t always weigh progress on the number. Take myself for example, I do about 3 miles of cardio per day, eat healthily, and target my arms and back. After weeks of doing this, I expected to be at least a few pounds down. Sadly, I ended up gaining weight. It took me weeks of my nutrition major friend saying “muscle weighs more than fat” to realize that I actually wasn’t doing badly. I started to notice definition in my arms, chest, and back. I started to be able to push myself more, whether it was lift more weight, do more reps, or run longer on the treadmill.
Long story short, results aren’t always seen in numbers. They’re seen over time, through changes in your body. Usually if your numbers are drastically dropping, then you aren’t losing weight the right way. Be patient with yourself and make a few small, healthy changes a day. These changes add up and show healthy progress over time. Progress isn’t measured by the amount of weight you have lost, but what makes the healthiest you.