You’ve been working up a sweat at the gym everyday and making sure you’re eating your vegetables. You’ve stopped with the nightly ice cream cone and made the effort to choose baked and broiled entrees over fried ones. You step on the scale to measure your progress and… only two pounds lost.
Sound familiar? I feel ya! But what if I told you that you can throw your scale away – and be fitter and happier for it? Interested?
The number on the scale can be affected by a variety of factors. What you ate that day, water retention, sodium retention, if you’ve worked out, are all taken into account when you step on the scale. For this reason, it is perfectly normal to fluctuate 3-5 pounds every single day! So don’t be discouraged if you see a 2 pound weight gain after a high-salt restaurant meal; remember that a pound is equal to 3,500 calories, so unless you ate 7,000 extra calories at that meal, you didn’t really gain 2 pounds.
What you weigh does not reflect how many burpees you can do. It does not reflect how much you can lift. It does not reflect FITNESS, which is much more important, nor does it reflect your medical numbers (cholesterol, blood sugar, etc) which is the best indicator of HEALTH. So ditch the scale and start paying more attention to these measures instead!
Your weight does not stop you from doing push-ups, squats, and burpees, right? Even if you have to modify, you can still do them. Instead of focusing on losing those last 5 pounds, focus on what your body can DO. Look at how far you’ve come. Maybe you started off doing push-ups on your knees and now you can do full ones. Be proud of how many burpees you can do in a minute, even if you carrying around a few more pounds than you’d like to.
More important than weight is body fat percentage. Muscle is less dense than fat, so the more you build, the higher the scale goes. That does not mean that you are unhealthy! Quite the opposite, in fact. By building muscle, you leave less room for fat, and how much fat you have impacts your health more than your weight does. A pair of body fat calipers is a much better investment than a scale!
The number on the scale does not (always) correlate to your medical labs. A five pound weight loss or gain tells you nothing of your cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. These are all reflective of what you’re eating – not necessarily how much. So start paying attention to the quality of your diet, not just the quantity.
By being so focused on the scale, you turn a blind eye to the other benefits of a healthy lifestyle, such as more energy, better sleep, a clear complexion, a happier mood, and less cravings. How much you weigh tells you none of this! Don’t count your workout program a “failure” because the scale hasn’t budged.
And most importantly, the scale dictates control of your self-esteem – and it shouldn’t! Don’t let it be the determining factor in how your mood is that day is. It’s amazing how we can go from confident to self-hatred in 5 seconds just because the needle on the scale moved to the right instead of the left. What the scale does not tell you is how beautiful, intelligent, talented, kind-hearted, and courageous you are!
You are all beautiful, collegiettes, don’t forget that. And don’t let anyone, or anything, tell you any different.