Breaking Down the Emotional Response to the Scale | Kettlebell Fat Blast

In this episode, Welcome in to the platform podcast kettlebell fat blast edition. In these special episodes I dive deep on the frameworks and topics that I use with my own clients as well as my own personal transformation journey. And this week's episode is a very personal and hot-button topic for me the emotional response that we get when we step on the scale to weigh in. This is something that has been problematic for me throughout my life and it's something that I'm still working on. And I give you some tips that I've been using and that will hopefully be useful for you as well if you struggle with this. I just want to take a second to say that I'm incredibly grateful that you listen to this podcast and the best way you could support me is to go register for the Twin Cities kettlebell open and come lift with me and my friends here October 23rd in Little Canada, Minnesota at the Athlete Lab, maybe TeleFriend or two. Just go to our website Twinsies kettlebellclub.com for details and if you haven't already, please be sure to leave a rating and review of the platform podcast in your app of choice and support my work by supporting our sponsors who's affiliate links you'll find in the episode notes. And of course if you want help with your nutrition, I am now at level two NCI Certified Coach and if you want help with kettlebell, I am also a kettlebell coach. So if you'd like to step on the platform and compete, you can reach out to me. I'm at Twin Cities kettlebell club at gmail.com or at Twin Cities kettlebell club on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Now without further ado, let's get into breaking down the emotional response of weighing in. All right, welcome into the platform podcast. This is a kettlebell fat blast edition. We are doing it live on Facebook in the kettlebell fat blast group. And if you're watching the recording there, you're watching this live. You'll notice I have I have a big flaming phoenix slash eagle with a kettlebell coming out of my head. Obviously a virtual background, but that is the the new kettlebell fat blast logo, which I got done a little while ago. I'm pretty pretty happy with pretty excited about. And that's also the logo that's on my on my lifting shoes from from Arsene Zernikoff and the laboratory of champions, lab of champions shoes that I got made. So I dig that logo. I hope you guys like it. It is a a phoenix rising from the ashes of and taking the form of a kettlebell because, you know, it's the kettlebell fat blast. So anyways, welcome into this week's episode. I am incredibly grateful that you are here and listening. So if you appreciate the content, please do me a favor and like, share, subscribe, send it to a friend, share it in your Instagram stories, any or all of the above is very much appreciated. It helps me grow my audience helps me grow my reach. I do this because I love it. And I'm trying to give back to the world in some form of positive in some positive way, I guess. So anyways, today's episode is about breaking down the emotional response to the scale. And I'm not going to set a time limit on this episode because this is an issue that is very personal to me. Like it is for a lot of people, I think. And it also happens to be one that has popped up both for me personally recently, as well as with some of my clients that I'm working with. And I think this is a fairly common problem in the space. Anybody that is going through a transformation journey or a fat lost journey, typically we use the scale as part of that, as part of our arsenal of tools. Right, we use the scale as one of those tools. And I think because of that and because, you know, like me, I come into this, I came into this journey and I'm still working through a lot of emotional baggage that is tied to my weight and tied to the number on the scale. You know, my earliest memories of being super conscious of my weight come from playing football. And in junior tackle, when you're coming up, you have rules about how big you can be and carry the football, which I understand as a youth football coach, as somebody who has coached youth football in the past, I understand why the rules are in place because if you've got a kid who is, you know, you know, 10 years old and 200 pounds, and you've got a whole bunch of kids that are 10 years old in 80 or 90 pounds, it's just not fair and it's not safe. So I understand why the rule is in place. This is not me. This is not me railing on why there is a rule, but what I will say as a kid who was a running back and I hover right at that 130 pound limit to be able to carry the football. If you didn't carry, if you weren't able to carry the football, they put a red stripe on your helmet, which maybe not, that might not be the best policy. You know, but they did put a red stripe on your helmet and so you became a striper is what they called them in my league, and I desperately did not want to be a striper because I was a running back and I was a good running back. I was the MVP of my sixth grade junior tackle league whoo congrats for me. I have the laminated piece of paper with my name misspelled to prove it. Thank you to my mom for holding on to that for all these years. So anyways, you know, I had to do unhealthy things just just to make weight like I would run laps in a sweat suit or a track suit, a sauna suit, before going and playing a football game, I would have to run around the track for, you know, sometimes an hour or two just to sweat out water weight so that I could then go way in, make the 130 pound limit and then try and rehydrate as fast as I could before the game started. You know, so not a super, not a super healthy start, you know, so I remember just dreading stepping on the scale every time because if I if I was over, I didn't get to play running back and that was going to hurt my team significantly. So there was a lot of pressure there and, you know, for a sixth grader to associate with their weight, you know, I was 11 years old, you know, so there's a lot of pressure there and then and then going on into, you know, and then as of course, as the year wore on, it got harder and harder for me to make weight because I was growing weird like an 11 year old kid, I was growing and so then then it started going into, you know, eating really high fiber foods and foods that I know would make me go to the bathroom, you know, so experimental, experimental, laxative use, great, you know, and then the next year, you know, now it's seventh grade and I'm a year removed and I've moved to a new town where the where football is an even bigger deal and I'm on a really good junior tackle program and I'm trying desperately to not be a striper again, you know, because I want to continue to play running back and I want to be able to carry the ball and so I'm trying desperately to not be to not be heavyweight and this is when this is when anorexic behavior started, you know, I would I would pack I would pack a school lunch and bring it and bring it to and bring it to the cafeteria and probably half the time I would throw it away or I would I would eat a few bites of it just so my friends saw me eating and then I would throw the rest of it away and just say that I wasn't hungry, I was starving, but, you know, anyways, so this is a really long winded intro as to why I care so much about this topping and it's, you know, it's led me it's led me to have a lot of issues with the scale this led me to have a lot of issues with my body weight and issues that I still that I still deal with to this day and I think a lot of people probably go through this the same thing, right? Like, let me know if this sounds familiar to you, right? Like, you know, you you've done everything right, you you hit your macros perfectly, you hit your steps, you did your workout, you did your nighttime routine and you got like a fall eight or nine hours of sleep and you're feeling good when you wake up in the morning, you're like, okay, I'm doing my stuff, I'm hitting all the things coach says I should be doing, you know, you take a big deep breath, close your eyes, step on the scale, exhale and open your eyes and you look down and you see you gained a pound. What the fuck? What the actual fuck, right? And then you're like, well, what the fuck? Why am I even bothering? Why do I do this? This is stupid. I'm doing everything right and the scale went up. This is this is ridiculous. And if you're only weighing in once a week, you know, that might be that might be the only the only weight data point that you get for the entire week to either validate or invalidate what you did for the entire week's worth of effort, right? And if you do that for multiple weeks in a row where you feel like you're making progress, like you're stacking your habits, you're doing the shit that your coach is telling you, you do have a coach, right? You're doing the stuff that your coach is telling you or that you know or the habits that you need to be working on and you step on the scale and it's not going the direction that you want, right? Or you're stagnated. And for week after week after week, the scale just isn't moving. And you start to dread stepping on the scale or you start to hate it. You start having an emotional response every time you step on the scale or it starts messing with your head where you're like, you're like, I fuck it. If everything I'm doing isn't getting me my desired result, then what is the fucking point, right? If I really, if what I'm trying to do is lose weight and I'm not losing weight, then what's the fucking point, right? So I really want to break this down into a few, into a few areas, right? So the first thing is we have to assess objectively, why did the scale go up? What are some possible explanations, why the scale might be up, right? Assuming you're doing all of the things that you're supposed to be doing, right? You're doing the things that you that you think you're supposed to be doing or that your coach is telling you're supposed to be doing, you're following your plan, you're doing all the things, right? So let's just say assuming, assuming everything is good, right? There's what are some other reasons that are outside of your control or some other externalities, extraneous variables that might cause the scale to go up. So what are some of those reasons? Inflammation is one of them, right? This just happened to me this week where I went to a baseball game this weekend and saw the twins play with my cousin. And I had my first gluten-containing beer and the first gluten that I've consumed within, I don't know, the last couple of weeks. I'll get into that some other time, but I've been eliminating gluten to see if it affects some blood markers that I have that I wanted to see if we could impact. So I had some gluten-containing beer and on surprisingly, my stomach was not super happy with it. And so when I weighed in on Sunday and Monday, I was super inflamed and unsurprisingly, the scale was up a couple of pounds likely because of that inflammation, right? Another possible reason is hydration level, right? How hydrated are you when you step on the scale? If you're weighing in at different times during the day, you're going to weigh different things depending on how much water you have in your body, right? One of the easiest ways to manipulate weight is hydration level and that's how a lot of professional fighters, wrestlers, you know, et cetera, people that compete in weight class sports will do water manipulation to help move the scale up or down depending on depending on what they're on what they're trying to accomplish, right? So hydration level has a ton to do with what you weigh, right? Your body's, you know, roughly 80% water, right? So if you're dehydrated, you're going to weigh less, but you're not going to perform well, you're not going to feel good. But you weigh less, congratulations. Or if you weigh in on a particular morning and you might weigh more, it might be that you're hydrated, right? And number one and number two actually go hand in hand, right? Inflammation is actually your body retaining water. That's typically what it is. So if you're inflamed for some reason, and that could be, you know, my example was, you know, eating gluten and so on, consuming gluten, something that I'm trying to avoid because I think I have an inflammatory response to it, that's one explanation. Another might be you had a fucking killer session the day before or this week, you've really hit the gym heart and your muscles are sore and swollen. Well, guess what, your body retains water to help them heal, right? So while you're recovering, your weight might actually go up. So this is how you can be like, holy shit, how did this fucking happen? I crushed a 1500 calorie workout yesterday worked out for two plus hours, right? How do I come in the next day weighing more? Well, you're inflamed and your body's retaining water. That's a very possible explanation and a very logical one, right? Another is food volume in the stomach. Did you eat breakfast before you weighed in? Did you have a cup of coffee before you weighed in? Did you have a big dinner last night? Did you eat close to bedtime, right? All sorts of reasons why you may have, those are other reasons why you may have a higher weight, you know, have you gone to the bathroom? When's the last time you went to the bathroom? Has it been three days since you pooped? Well, you're going to weigh more, right? Have you gone to the bathroom yet that day? Right? That's another, that's another reason. Poor sleep is another one. And again, this ties back to the inflammation thing, right? If you were tossing and turning all night and only got, you know, four hours of disrupted sleep, guess what? Your body didn't, your body didn't do what it normally does during good sleep, which is expel waste, process things, reduce inflammation, repair, recover. That's what sleep is for. So if you get poor sleep, right? You're going to get less, you're going to get less reduction of inflammation, right? Your body's not going to have as much time. So you're still going to be inflamed. Another one is stress, stress is huge. And this again ties to inflammation, stress and inflammation go hand in hand. They are positively correlated, meaning as one goes up, the other goes up, right? So when you're stressed, you're likely inflamed. And when you're inflamed, it's an indicator of stress. Now that might be exogenous stress like a workout or eating something or, you know, whatever, there's a ton of, ton of examples of exogenous stress, right? Or it might be, and it might be an internal stress, right? There might be something wrong internally, right? Like if you have an appendicitis, right? Your inflammation levels are up, right? Your, your C reactive protein scores are going to be very high, right? So these are things that that doctors can look at, right? So, so, to, to circle back, you need to assess why did the scale go up? And those are some possible reasons why the scale might have, might have gone up, right? And so from, once you've kind of assessed what are some of the external reasons why stress might, or why, why the scale might have gone up, then you need to reframe, right? What is the scale? It is a tool, it is a measurement tool, and what doesn't measure? It measures the earth's gravitational force on your body at a given point in time. What else does it measure? That's it. That's all. That's the only thing that it measures. I mean, you may have one of those fancy scales that measures hydration and body fat percentage and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, I can get into the, the accuracy and validity of those measurements, but I won't. So let's just say that that it is a measurement of gravitational force, the earth's gravitational force on your body at any given point. And why do I say the earth? Because if you took the same scale to the moon and weighed in at the moon, congratulations, you lost weight, but you didn't really, you're still the same person, right? You just weigh less on the moon because the gravitational force of the moon isn't as much, right? So it's really just a measure of gravitational force on earth at your body, at a singular point in time. And that singular point in time is, is very important, right? You need to make sure that you recognize that it is a singular data point, right? It is not, it is not anything beyond that. It is just a measurement of, of gravitational force at a point in time. And it isn't until you, until you have multiple, excuse me, I'm continuing to, I'm about to have a sneezing fit and I'm trying to avoid it by scratching my nose. Until you have multiple data points, longitudinally, you can't do any temporal analysis, you know, time-based analysis, right? Otherwise, singular data points as a point in time are, are only reflective of the situation at that time, right? So it isn't until you have many of those data points strung together that you can start seeing trends. You don't see trend lines emerge until you have multiple data points over a period of time, right? So don't get too worried about any singular data point, right? That's very, very important, important, all right? And the other thing that's important is that you can textualize your body weight with other data points, right? Now, I work in data science consulting for my day job. And one of the things that that we explain to clients all the time is that the more features that inform a model, the more robust the model is, right? And so if we're trying to understand our health and our wellness, looking only at weight is going to be an incredibly brittle model. So don't look at just weight, look at other important factors, right? Bring in other data points so that you have a more well-rounded perspective on your health, right? So what are some of those? Well first, biofeedback. I am huge on biofeedback. I think biofeedback matters more than anything else. Biofeedback is just a fancy way of saying, how do you feel? How is your body responding? And we spend so much time in America being bombarded with impulses and inputs that we're going, going, going, going, going, that a lot of times we're not even aware of how we feel. And we can normalize we as humans. One of our evolutionary traits is that we adapt really, really well and we can adapt to incredibly shitty situations and normalize that as just how we feel, right? I can't tell you how many times I've had somebody be like, I didn't even realize how shitty I felt until I started feeling better. Like, this was just my normal. I'm one of those people too, like just having pain in my body for an extended period of time was just something I thought was normal, right? Like having back pain, having knee pain, having leg, I'm just like, ah, that's just the consequences of playing football for as long as I did, right? No, that's not normal. Like you can fix those things. You can address those things, you know, you may not be able to ever get back to where you were, but it's not normal to just accept certain things, right? We should feel good. We shouldn't feel tired. We should have hunger and fullness cues. We should, we should recover, right? We should have energy without meaning 400 milligrams of caffeine a day, right? We should be able to fall asleep at night and stay asleep, right? So, the biofeedback measures that we track, that I track with my clients are sleep, hunger, recovery, energy, digestion and stress, those are the shreds, that's the shreds model from Sam Miller. So, shout out to Sam Miller, Sam Miller, science, great coaches coach. He's excellent, really high level scientific stuff. So, that shreds model, I totally stole from him. And then I also added a couple that from working with Mike Milner in the pop team, cravings, mood, performance and sex drive or cycle health. Well, sex drive and cycle health, actually, cycle health is for women only, obviously. Men, you have a hormonal cycle, but you don't ovulate. So, much less relevant, we don't have any convenient way of tracking that, but sex drive is important, right? You should have a sex drive, right? Especially if you're of sexual age and not in your 80s, frankly, like you should have sex drive, right? You should want to have sex, that's normal. Obviously, it's going to vary from person to person. What level is normal for them? But there should be some sex drive. And if there's not, that's probably indicative of some of some things being out of balance in your life, too much stress, not enough recovery, not enough food, like, you know, there's probably, there's probably something off if you don't have any sex drive, right? But looking at your cravings, looking at your mood, right? Cravings is cravings and hunger go hand in hand, but they're not the same thing, right? So, your hunger cues are, do you get hungry? If so, how hungry? And your cravings are, do you have cravings for specific things, right? Are there, you know, so there's a difference between just being general hungry? I think we've probably all been there where you're just like, I could eat the back end of an elephant. I don't care. Just put something in front of me. I'm so hungry. Whereas cravings are like, man, I just, I really want to fucking pizza. I know I just had, I know I just had my dinner, you know, but I just really want pizza, or I really want ice cream, right? Or whatever, whatever the craving, like cravings are specific for certain things, typically. And it's usually calorically dense, but nutrient shallow foods, you know, salty sweet, hyper-palatable foods, salty sweet, crunchy, fatty, right? So cravings are different than hunger, but those two typically go hand in hand. If hunger is high, but cravings are low, that just means that we're seeing good metabolic response. You know, your metabolism is responding, right? Maybe you've just started to deficit, and so your hunger cues are up, but you don't have severe cravings. But if hunger is really high, and cravings are really high, that's an indication that you might be underfeeding. If hunger is really low, and cravings are really high, that can begin to be an indication of metabolic adaptation. That could mean that your body has started to down-regulate. It's hunger cues, right? Meaning you don't need as much food, or your body is not sending you the signal for as much food, but you still have cravings for calorically dense food, right? And that's likely an indication that your body is starting to be metabolically adapted to being in a deficit, or being in a high stress situation for a long period of time, right? So again, sleep, hunger, recovery, energy, digestion, stress, cravings, mood, performance, sex, drive, and cycle, right? Those are the biofeedback markers that I like to track. And most of those are subjective. There are objective ways to track them. Like I track sleep quantity and sleep quality. Sleep quantity. I just get from my aura ring. I also get a sleep quality score from my aura ring. So I have both an objective quantity measure and an objective quality measure, right? Again, maybe they're not the most accurate, but it's consistent, and it's the same method over and over again, so it informs directional decision making, right? Another thing that you can look at to contextualize your weight are health markers, right? And this is part of where the health at any size movement comes from, is you get one of the things that they get right is that you can be a heavier weight, a larger weight than what, you know, medical or actuarial charts, like the BMI, tell you you should be based on your height and still have very good health markers, right? Like I just got comprehensive blood work done as part of my annual physical. Do that please, all of you. So PSA, go get your annual physicals. Do that. That's really important. It's like the lowest level thing you can do just to make sure you're taking care of your health. See your doctor. Anyways, that was just a sidebar. Get your health markers checked and you can look at those, right? Those are good ways of indicating your internal health, right? So even me being, you know, six foot, 265, 270, depending on what I'm weighing on a given day, even at that weight, you know, where BMI says that I'm too big, my cholesterol is at the almost ideal ratio, my blood pressure is excellent, right? Heart rate, resting heart rate, recovery, you know, etc, etc. All of my biomarkers that the doctors check are very, very good. And especially considering my family history of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, I'm really happy with one of my triglycerides and total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, all of those things. Now, can they be improved? Yeah, of course. Most of us have places we can improve. I have genetically low HDL in the good cholesterol, right? So that's why I take fish oil supplements. It's why I strength train, right? But you can move those to some degree, but some of those things are your genetically predisposed for. And I know that, which is why I check these things and make sure that I'm doing the things that can help improve them. So thanks for tuning into this episode of the platform podcast. We'll get back to the episode shortly. But first I wanted to share a few exciting updates about the Twin Cities catabell open happening here, October 23rd in Little Canada, Minnesota. Please go to our website, Twinsidyskettabellclub.com to register. Our list of sponsors so far include two belts from Belovator, six pairs of Ursa's barefoot athletic shoes, as well as two caddy rock custom built maces from Cambrian customs. Other sponsors include pro catabell, cuspire nutrition, and 27 degrees apparel. So we have some awesome prizes. And I am very, very excited to welcome you here at the Athlete Lab for our first annual competition. Please take the time and go register. And I look forward to seeing you there. You know, I alluded to the inflammation thing earlier. And so one of the health markers that I had checked, I had a complete hormone panel done in T4, T3 and TSH. So thyroid specific hormone, free T3 and free T4 are thyroid hormones. And I had those checks. T4 is just the amount of thyroid hormone that you have in your bloodstream. And then T3 is what is converted into the active form that actually affects your metabolism. And some of those indicators were a little low. So I was still within the clinical range, but borderline hypothyroidism. So working with my coach, we talked about what are some things that we should where some things that we should do. And she said, I think you should really look at gluten, because that is one of the most common factors that causes inflammation and causes thyroid issues. And she has Hashimoto's herself, and she knows a lot about this. She's a hormone specialist. And so we decided to come up with a protocol that helped me improve my thyroid markers. And we're going to see, I'm going to get them tested here again in a couple of weeks and see if the changes that we've made over the last, you know, 30, 45 days have improved my thyroid. Because I was having some issues where I was feeling run down, I was feeling low energy, feeling low sex drive, you know, et cetera, et cetera, and not really just generally not feeling well, having no very little motivation, very little drive, you know, and those are all our indicators, things that could indicate hypothyroidism. And so because I got the health markers checked, I've been a lot more focused on those things, even than my weight, right? And that's more important. Feeling better is more important than what you way, right? So check your health marker. Another way to contextualize your weight with other data points is circumference measurements. You can be recomposing your body and not have your weight change at all, but lose inches. And this has happened with some of my clients as well, right? Where they're like, yeah, I measure my thighs and my thighs are down an inch. My body weight is still the same. But my thighs are down an inch. My biceps are up an inch, you know, et cetera, right? So you can add a pound of lean muscle mass, lose a pound of body fat and have a zero net change on the scale, but be a positive two pounds changed as far as recomposition is concerned. So if the goal is fat loss and not just weight loss, circumference measurements are a great way to see how you're doing in fat loss, right? Another way is close fit, right? So if you don't want to, you don't want to take measurements of your body, I still highly recommend that you do, but obviously your clothes are an indicator, right? If you went from, you know, 160 pounds to 163 pounds and your clothes fit exactly the same, likely nothing has changed. You didn't gain any body fat non-likelihood. It's probably just a water fluctuation or a food fluctuation, something like that, right? Or if you went from 160 to 165 and your, and your clothes fit looser in the waist, but tighter in the, in the quads, right? You might have just put on some muscle mass, right? So you can assess how do your clothes fit? Are they tight in the places you want them to be tight, typically for men that's in the chest and in the arms, you know, in the shoulders, we want them to, the shirt to be tight up top and we want it to be tapered in the body because, you know, we don't have a big belly, right? Women, it might be, you know, if they want the jeans tight in the booty and tight through the thighs, but not in the waist, okay, right? So assess how your clothes fit. Another way is progress pictures and I recommend from the front, from each side and one from behind, so four pictures, fairly easy, everybody's got a, everybody's got a time around their camera, or you've seen people do the selfies in the mirror, right? And you don't have to share those with anybody, right? But those can be your indicators of progress, right? I highly encourage my, my people to take progress pictures. I don't force them to, nor do I ask them to share them with me. That is completely up to them. If they want to share progress pictures, that is their decision. And we will talk about that, but I highly recommend especially if you're going through a body transformation that you take pictures because you will see shit on camera before you see it on the scale a lot of times, right? And you, again, you might see that your weight hasn't changed at all. And you can see transformations, decomposition transformations that took a year plus where somebody might have changed zero pounds on the scale, but you, they completely recomposed for their body, right? And that, that is huge. And I can, I can attest to that myself, you know, at one point when I was 350 plus pounds, you know, I was 350 plus pounds and I got soft. Like I had stopped lifting heavy for, you know, I, for a while there, I stopped working out all together, right? And I lost a lot of muscle mass. Now, frankly, you know, unfortunately, it came back fairly quickly once I started working out, you know, but you could definitely see, you can definitely see recomposition changes in progress pictures. So highly recommend taking progress pictures. You know, and then another way to contextualize is, is your performance, right? And I know I mentioned that as, as a biofeedback marker that we, that we check, right? But you can, I think it's, I think it's also something that's just really important to reframe the scale weight with, you know, how am I performing, right? If, if at, you know, if at 160 pounds, you're performing your best, right? Then maybe going to 150 pounds isn't desirable. It depends on what your goal is, right? Some goals are going to be better pursued at a heavier weight than others, right? I can tell you, like there are a lot of CrossFit athletes that go into the games, you know, five or 10 pounds heavier than what they prefer to walk around at because they need that fuel. They need that to be able to perform their best. And a lot of times by the end of the games, they've lost 5, 10, 15 pounds, right? But that has a lot to do with the strain and stress of, of what they're trying to do. But they, they know that their performance, their optimal performing weight is at a certain, is at a certain level. And it may not be the level that makes you look your best, right? Because performance and aesthetics are not analogous, right? Very important to know that, right? So performance is, is another way to, to assess. You know, so if you feel really good and you're performing really well and you're crushing your workouts, you know, maybe the weight isn't as important, right? Weight is just gravitational force on your body, on earth, at a point in time, right? So some other context is super, super important. Now if your weight is up, your biofeedback sucks, your health markers suck, your measurements are bigger than they want, your clothes don't fit the way they want. You don't like the way you look in pictures and your performance isn't great. Well, yeah, then obviously there are some changes that need to be made, right? But that's holistic approach, right? Then, then you, then you have plenty of, plenty of other data to justify or to support maybe how you feel when you stepped on the scale, right? And if that's how you feel, because all of these other pieces of data also support that feeling, then you can use that to, to, as an impetus for change, motivation for change, right? If you don't feel good, you don't look good, all those things, you're like, okay, something needs to change. Great, but that doesn't have to do with just the weight on the scale. It's all of those things, not just the scale way, right? The other, the other thing I have to say, you know, another, another point I have is, is open the aperture on, on, and for those of you who aren't familiar with the photography term, that means open the lens wider, right? Look at a longer timeline, I talked earlier about longitudinal data being necessary, right? So think about how long did it take you to gain the weight? Was it years? If it's been years and years and years, right? If you were like, I graduated college and I was 150 pounds, and then 10 years later, I was 165 pounds, and then five years later, I was 185 pounds. Now it's been 20 years since I graduated college and I'm over 200, and I don't recognize the person that I see, right? Okay, if it took you that long to gain the weight, is it reasonable to expect that it's going to change quickly? Probably not, right? It can go off a lot quicker than it went on, especially if you gain weight slowly, you know, over many, many, many, many, many years, with focused effort, you can, you can reduce weight a lot quicker than that, you can reduce body fat, you know, quicker. I'm not saying it's going to take exactly as long to come off as it, as it did to go on, but what I'm saying is you have to couch your expectations and your feelings towards your weight with the, with the understanding that this didn't happen overnight, even if it feels like it happened overnight, because usually that's just when we hit the, hit the, the tipping point in our mind, where it's like suddenly you don't recognize yourself, right? But that doesn't mean that the weight went on quickly, right? It probably took a long time. So look at how long it took for the weight to, to go, to go on, and then look at the, the timeframe of what your expectations are for, for loss, right? And you must accept that on a longitudinal path, right, that the path is always nonlinear. The, the trend line is always nonlinear. There's going to be ups and downs and plateaus, right? Flat points where it stays the same, you know, there's going to be fluctuations up, fluctuations down. There'll be times when you're lose weight quickly, and then flat line for a while, and then lose weight for a while or, or gain for a little bit, and then lose weight again, right? It's because your body is a, is, is a adaptive mechanism. Your metabolism is adaptive, right? It adapts to the, to the stimulus that you put on it consistently, right? So everything, nothing works forever. I won't say everything works, but most things work, most things that put you in a caloric deficit work, they don't work forever, and your methods need to change, you need to periodize your, your nutrition, right? And your training, if you want to learn more about periodization, go back to my episode on periodization. It's basically saying things need to go in seasons because the path is nonlinear, embrace that it's nonlinear, and use the fact that it's nonlinear to your advantage. Understand the science, and intentionally make it nonlinear because you're never going to get a straight dissension down, right? It's never going to be a straight line down, right? You hope that the trend line moves that way, right? But understand that there will be fluctuations. So open up the aperture and, and really understand the context and, and understand that it's going to be a nonlinear path, right? So those are, those are some of the tips, you know, as far as, you know, just reframing the scale and, and contextualization of, of weight and, and some other things to, to emphasize, right? But for the, for the actual process of weighing in, one thing that that I've been working on is getting my mind right before I actually step on the scale. And right now, I am weighing in every day, right? Because I want, because I want frequent data points, and I want, and I want to be able to smooth the trends, right? And I know that the more, the more data I have, the, the more consistent, I have it, the more I'm going to be able to, to analyze it. That doesn't mean I don't have emotional responses to it. I do. I still do what I'm working on that. And I'm working on that by giving myself time to frame, to pre-frame in my mind. I'm getting my mind right before I step on the scale. So I'm, I'm trying to do a positive affirmation about myself, my body. So, you know, like this morning, I told, you know, I told myself that I am powerful. I'm strong. I'm smart. And I'm a good, and I'm a good father, right? You know, things that relate to the, relate to the scale, you know, or don't relate to the scale, excuse me, that don't relate to the scale before I step on the scale, right? And then I step on the scale, measure my weight, and then I step off. And I remind myself of that same affirmation. Because nothing changed, nothing changed about who I am as a person, between when I weighed in and me processing that information, right? Nothing fundamentally changed about who I am, right? And I don't, I'm trying to disassociate my weight with my worth and my value, right? And I feel like that is so important. So I'm trying to intentionally focus on things that are disassociated from my weight that still make me feel valuable or make me feel strong or make me feel positive, right? Like being strong is something that I value about myself. I've always been a strong person, right? I like being able to help people move. I like being strong, right? So that's something I value about myself. And regardless of what I weigh on the scale this morning, I'm probably just as strong or stronger than I was yesterday, because I worked out yesterday, right? So I just try and focus on that. I try to focus on those things. And I try and also associate some things that have nothing to do with my weight. And I got to give my wife credit for this. Like, you know, she's made a couple of statements about, you know, 10 years from now, you know, our kids aren't going to remember what we looked like in our bathing suit. What they will remember is that we were in the lake playing with them, right? Or that we were on the beach with them, right? So if I'm letting my self-consciousness about my body hold me back from doing those things, I'm doing myself a disservice and I'm doing my family a disservice, right? Don't do that, right? You're worth is greater than just this, right? We're not this crude matter. We're luminous beings, quoting Yoda, right? Luminous beings, we are not this crude matter, not this flesh that we walk around in. Yeah, we want to optimize that crude matter to the best of our ability so that the luminous beings we are inside of that vehicle are strong and healthy, right? But also understand that this is just a meat suit that we walk around in, right? So don't overemphasize it. Try and try and make it as healthy and performant as possible. But don't overemphasize it. Give yourself positive affirmation that is disassociated from your weight, right? And then so finally, and this is this is the conclusion I came to with one of my clients, right? Is sometimes you might just need to step away from the scale. If it is giving you anxiety and it's causing you problems, you might need to step away from the scale, right? Like I'm not going to lie, you know, it's been a struggle for me to get on these episodes sometimes and share with you guys how this is going because honestly at this point in my journey, when I when I started this, when I started this, you know, whatever months, months and months ago, I thought I would, I thought I would be down probably, you know, 30, 40 pounds at this point, you know, and I'm not, I'm not at all. I got down to, you know, the, the low two, I got into, I got into the two low two 60s or even into the two 50s and then I just plateaued and I felt like dog shit, right? And, you know, Sam, Samantha Burr, my previous nutrition coach told me I think you need a reverse because I, you know, we've got you in a really severe, we've got you in a really severe deficit and your, your body's fighting back. It's, it's not like the biofeedback wasn't, wasn't good, I wasn't feeling good, performance was starting to slip, I was depressed, you know, all of the things I mentioned, right? So, you know, I probably took it too far, too far, too fast, and, you know, I hadn't been accounting for, you know, how long I'd been in a chronic stress stress condition. So, you know, it's been hard for me to, to publicly have, have go out and say like, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to get into the best shape of my life. And I'm going to take you along the journey with me and then have it not go the way that I've wanted it to go up to this point, you know, but I'm doing, I'm doing it the right way. And I told you guys I was going to share the good bad and the ugly and I'm going to continue doing that. So, even though I'm not where I want to be, I'm not where I want to be yet. I will get there. It's just a matter of timing and making sure that I'm following the right steps to do it in the right way so that it is sustainable change, right? Because I've been able to walk around it, you know, 252, 160 pounds for the better part of 10 years, you know, so I've maintained that 100 pound weight loss or at least the majority of it. But now I would like to reset and go to a lower point, but I want to do it in the right way. So, you know, at some points, you might have to step away from the scale if it's not serving you, right? It is a tool. You are its master, right? You don't have to pick up a hammer, right? If the hammer isn't the right tool, or if it's no longer useful for you, if it's not serving you, it's okay to leave the hammer in the tool belt, right? You don't have to use the scale. And any coach that is telling you that you have to weigh in to work with them, find a different fucking coach because they're not very good, right? Or they're too rigid, right? Or maybe it doesn't align with the goal that they I shouldn't I shouldn't be so harsh on all coaches. But if it's a lifestyle coach who's telling you that you have to that you have to weigh in, you know, that's different than if it's, you know, a bodybuilding coach or you've you're in a weight class specific sport or something like that, right? That's different. But even that, I would say, you know, if you can't if you can't do your job without the data point, a singular data point of weight, then you need to improve your skills. Anyways, so it's okay to step away from the scale if it's not serving you a few ways you can do that. If you want to continue using it, you're you're not quite ready to to completely step away from it, right? Reduce the frequency. So if you're weighing in every day and that's giving you anxiety, try three days a week. That's still plenty of data points, right? Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, try and keep it consistent and try and keep it under the same conditions. I weigh in first thing in the morning, you know, before I've eaten, before I've gone to the bathroom, before I've drank anything, I go straight to the scale weigh in. So it's roughly at the same time every day under the same circumstance, just consistency of laboratory conditions, right? So try and do it. Do it under the same conditions, but you can reduce the frequency. Maybe it's once a week. Maybe it's once every two weeks. Maybe it's once a month, right? You know, whatever it is that you need to do, right? If it's just reducing the frequency, but you still want that data point. Or, you know, I had another coach tell me there's actually there's actually a like a Bluetooth scale where you can have where you can have the data automatically goes to an app that tracks your weight and she and she has one of her clients who weighs in with her eyes closed and she gets the data, the coach gets the data, but the client never sees it. She weighs in with her eyes closed, steps off the scale, turns around and walks out of the room, but she still weighs in every day. And it's been really useful for her because her coach still gets the data. They don't really talk about the weight, but the client doesn't have the emotional response to seeing her weight. And she's been able to focus more on her habits because she's not thrashing about changing her approaches day in and day out because the scale moved in a way she didn't expect it to, right? So you can obscure the data from your view, I guess is my point. And you don't have to go that high tech. If you have a partner who's willing to help you with this, you can just say, hey, I don't want to see the weight, but I want my coach to have it or I want it to be recorded. So can you just write down my weight? I'm going to step on the scale, close your eyes and step off, right? So you can figure out a way to obscure the data from your view. That might be a bit labor intensive, or that might seem a little cuckoo bird to some people, but if it helps you disassociate the emotional response or decrease your emotional response to the scale, then by all means fucking go for it. You can also just take a break, right? If you just need a break, take a break, right? And I would actually argue that there are times in a periodized approach where it might be beneficial to not focus on the scale, right? So if you move from a fat loss phase into a maintenance phase, right? You're going to want the scale to know that you're maintaining, right? But if you move from a maintenance phase into a performance focused phase, right? Where we shift from an aesthetic goal to a performance goal, then why do we care what you weigh? Unless you have to hit a weight class to perform, right? For your sport, unless you're in a weight class based sport, I don't care what you weigh. I care how you're performing, right? So taking a break from the scale can be a very beneficial thing. And you don't have to be, you don't have to be competing in a sport to do that. You can simply say, you know, for the next two months, I'm not going to weigh in and I'm just going to focus on how I feel. I'm going to focus on how I perform in the gym. I want to hit a PR in whatever, pick a lift, deadlift, squat. I don't give a shit, right? I want to run my best five minute mile time. I want to whatever, I want to have my best 5,000 meter row time, right? Focus on your performance and set the scale aside for a few months and see how you feel and eat to eat to perform, fuel to perform and see how you feel, right? And then you can always step back on the scale at the end of that. You might be surprised. You step away from the scale and focus on your performance for a while and then you come back. You might be surprised with what you weigh when you come back. I've seen people lose weight in that, in that application. I've also seen people gain weight, but be totally fine with it because they're like, now I can, I can deadlift two times my body weight. No, that's awesome, right? So taking a break from the scale, just like taking a diet break might be a good mental cleanser for you. It might be something that helps you set, set those things aside, helps decrease your emotional attachment, right? And especially if you can take a break from it and then you step back on later and realize that taking a break from it didn't change anything. It didn't, it didn't set you back, right? You didn't come back 20 or 30 pounds heavier, right? Then taking a break from the scale becomes okay, right? It's just a tool, right? And you know, lastly, you can get rid of it altogether. You never have to weigh in ever again in your entire life if you don't want to. If it is not serving you, you do not have to weigh in, right? You can just say no. I know people that got rid of their scales entirely because they wanted to focus on all the other things and the scale distracted them from those things. If, you know, they had such an emotional attachment to the scale number that they could not focus on their habits, they could not focus on their biofeedback, they could not focus on on how they were feeling, right? Getting in touch with how they were feeling internally, right? And really checking in with their bodies, they couldn't do it. So they just got rid of the scale. It was like throwing away an anchor for some people, right? You do not have to have a scale. You don't have to have that emotional response, right? You are in control, it is your life. Your value is not associated to the number on the scale, right? You can do what you want, right? If you need help, you want to figure out how to do these things, you're afraid to get rid of the scale because you feel like you're going to go off the rails and you're going to put on a bunch of weight, you know, you need accountability, that's what coaches are for, right? So I'm here to help if you want help. If you have questions, reach out to me on Facebook, Instagram, email, right? At Twin Cities Kettlebell Club, you guys probably know how to get at me if you're listening to this, but it's at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club on Instagram, twincitieskettlebellclub.com or at twincitieskettlebellclub at gmail.com for email, right? I'm here to help if you have questions, but hopefully this was informative for you and hopefully hopefully you can feel my passion about this topic and if you are struggling with the scale and struggling with emotional response, know that I understand. I am here with you, I am here for you. You can feel free to reach out to me. It is an important topic and it is okay to struggle with it, right? But you don't have to. People are here to help, it is totally up to you, it is within your control, right? So how do you want it to go? It's up to you. All right, that said, I'm going to sign off. Thank you all very much for listening and I will catch you guys next week for another episode. Have a great rest of your week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the platform podcast. I'm Jordan Cunywright. We'll be back with a new episode for you next week. Please don't forget to register for the Twin Cities Kettlebell Open on our website, twincitieskettlebellclub.com. And if you have a question or suggestion, please email me at twincitieskettlebellclub at gmail.com. And don't forget to follow us on social media at twincitieskettlebellclub. And if you want to step under the platform and competing kettlebell sport, please reach out to me. Until next time.