lifestyle

Why you should throw out your scale.

I want to be at this weight in this many days, and to do that I need to lose this many pounds. Have you heard someone say something like this before? Have you said this before? Everyone has a number in his or her head. But I’m here to tell you – it doesn’t matter.

Putting this number, this goal weight in your head is not always a good idea. No one, that’s right, no one can predict how quickly or slowly your body will lose a certain amount of weight. Every body is different. No person responds the same to a workout. For some people weight loss comes easy, and for others – not so much. So why set this weight loss goal for yourself that you have no idea if you can achieve or not? I used to obsess about the number on my scale, but once I stopped worrying about that, I started to feel better about myself and quite honestly look much better too. Here’s my tip for you:

Instead of making your “fitness goals” about weight loss, actually make them about your level of fitness! I’ve written blog posts before about goal making, but this is one change I personally made in my goal making process that has helped me tremendously. Say you really want to lose weight – instead of going into a workout thinking ‘I need to burn this many calories’ or ‘please let me lose weight today’ – decide what you want to achieve in your workout. Yesterday maybe you did 8 pushups and today you want to do 9. Say, last month your mile time was 13 minutes and this month you want to bring it down to 11. These are goals you can achieve. Unlike weight loss goals, you can give yourself a deadline with these. If you take just 10 seconds off of you mile each day, by the end of the month you will get it down to your goal time. You just have to be consistently pushing yourself harder each day. And that is what fitness is all about; you SHOULD be getting stronger each day.   If you only push yourself as hard as you did that day before, your body will not change. So, use fitness goals to help you reach those bigger weight loss goals.

That’s the great thing about fitness goals – if you really work to achieve them, weight loss will still happen. If everyday you push harder in your workout than you did the day before – your body WILL start to change. And you WILL start to lose weight. But at least you are working to something tangible. If the only goal you have in your mind is weight loss, and you weigh yourself everyday – you’re not going to get very far before you give up.

Don’t obsess over the number. Do not weigh yourself everyday – or every week for that matter. Heck, throw out your scale! At the end of the day, you need to feel good about how you look. A number isn’t going to change how you feel about yourself.   You may reach your goal weight and find you’re still not happy. So, don’t worry about what that scale says – if you feel good about how you look, that is all that matters. If you don’t feel good about the way you look, then do something about it. You have to push yourself, don’t let the scale be your only motivator to workout – be your own motivator.

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