Moving Beyond the Scale: Other Success Metrics

getting this emotional attachment with scales, something

I've had to have a conversation the last number of weeks actually is is about that with one or two clients and just like it depicts our mood like if we have lost 0.2 kilos on the scales this week we're not at that one percent rate of loss that we're looking for like it's changed our whole mood yeah that kind of emotional connection with this it's just because it's just such an objective number that they quantified we say this is the only way I'm moving forward is if that scale is moving forward where maybe it might be something else like maybe maybe we have done other things outside that like our sleep is better or um resting heart rate has dropped or we've probably added more tissue something like this and that could potentially have been there so i think there's some fantastic um uh definitely things that people we can advise people on what to do if they are entering a diving phase yeah look it's and that's the thing right it's identity politics people identify their self-worth with a skill because commercialism and capitalism tell you that that's your thing, right? But it's not. I mean, here's the thing. If you want to weigh less, cool, let's go into outer space and stand on the scale. You're not going to look any different. You're going to weigh different. You're going to be happy, but you're going to look the same. You're not training to look for that scale weight to be down. You're training so you look better and clothes feel better. So what we need to do is look, let's look at some other metrics that show success. It's like, I only lost 400 grams of weight in the last two weeks. Yeah. But your squat went up 10 kilos about that. And you look like, oh yeah, I only lost 400 grams over the last two weeks. Yeah. But you just told me that you had to go buy another size pants down. Shit. I didn't think about that. Yeah. There you go. You know, so there's, we've got to use other metrics like um like um if you're doing cardiovascular conditioning it's like hey look your 5k time went down 15 seconds and you put 10 kilos on on your squat that's how about that like i didn't and you can actually do your workout without whinging and you can actually put your shoes on without having to fucking sit down and put proper foot onto something how about that so we need to look at more more positives progression isn't just losing weight it's also building strength getting more conditioning, sleeping better, pooping better, feeling better, moving without pain. Those things are probably more important initially than just the weight loss. 100%. And so a phrase I like to use them as well as I'm not a scale weight coach. I'm a body composition coach. And that's it. Chase that number and the scales when, like you said, there can be so many positive factors that has had an unbelievable week from the lens of someone else. But we're so narrow minded into that one number that we step onto every single morning that that just it goes overhead then and i think that's the again the beauty of having a coach that they can pull these things your weight hold on a second if uh if you told me like josh your your digestion is much better your bowel movements are better your sleep is better these kind of things where maybe i might have just narrowed into that one thing for sure yeah i mean look if you if you only use the skill that's that's very easy right like i'm not paid to get people to lose weight And I'm like you, I'm paid to make you have a rock star body. That's the thing. Like anybody can lose weight if you starve yourself and do a shit ton of cardio. That's easy. If you can just do that and not deviate, all right, cool, you're going to lose weight. But are you going to have a nice finished product? So if you look at, if you ever saw the Subway commercial with Jared, and we won't get on to Jared's pedophile stuff, which he's in prison for right now. Apparently eating Subway makes you a pedophile or something. But, you know, the whole thing was 600 calories a day or whatever, eating Subway sandwiches. And he went from being really big and fat to small and fat. He didn't look any different. He just lost a lot of weight. No one comes to me for that. And no one's going to pay a trainer to take them. I want you to take the way I look right now and just make it smaller. People have an image in their head of what they want to look like. And it's usually not that. it's usually you know here's an instagram person or this uh victoria's secret model or i want to look like fucking arnold schwarzenegger that's a different thought process than just losing weight body composition and losing weight are two completely different things they're inherently intertwined but they're also compartmentalized 100 couldn't agree with you more there on that one i think they're really nice analogies as well and again one of the posts that i put up the other day was that kind of thing where we can just make you, like you said, dick skin lean and just hammer you into the floor. But if it isn what we want to try and achieve then there no reason to do so And I you know I when I got into industry I was just like everybody else I had I love the lift weights I love the squat I love the deadlift I love to do all this stuff And