By: Jen Heath
Do you remember your mother ever hollering this at you when you were a kid? You might have been in a bedroom wreaking havoc…at least that what she thought, because it was “so quiet” in there….how could you not be? But what if you were quietly building a beautiful Lincoln log cabin? Because you you were quiet, and she couldn’t “see” what you were doing, she thought most likely that you were making a mess…when really you were just building the logs into something beautiful…something she had taught you to do just days before.
We women are interesting creatures. Because we cannot “see” what is going on on the inside of our bodies, we sometimes think that it’s just making a mess in there that we will constantly have to go in and clean up after for the rest of our lives. However, when following a well designed nutrition and training program, your body has little choice but to do as you have dictated. I point this analogy out because it is so similar to what I hear from many of the women who fit into the category of “slightly overweight” (this does not often apply to women who are obese, as they will lose lots of scale weight quickly). I teach these women how to eat and how to train, they do it and start making awesome changes! I even get an email from time to time that says how excited someone is to take their weight and measurements because they like what they are seeing and how their bodies feel.
They are so excited right before they step on the scale, but then when the scale hasn’t dropped a ton, all the sudden, they are less pleased with what they had enjoyed seeing in the days prior. When women look at numbers on a scale, and use those numbers to determine whether they are going to be satisfied with their progress it can be a real psychological mess. If you look better, and your clothes are fitting looser, but the scale hasn’t changed, it is common to holler “Hey!…What’s going on in there?!” Letting the scale determine perception of progress is simply a way of thinking that needs to be changed.
The simple facts are this: Often times, women look at the scale after working hard on their programs, and all the sudden, no matter what any of the other factors are, they just think their bodies are making a huge mess inside. This could not be further from the truth! When the scale doesn’t drop, but your measurements do, it is the number one sign that you body is replacing fat with muscle. This should be the number one goal of every woman who wants to be lean. The bottom line is this: When you are training right, and feeding your body so that it can improve it’s body composition, fat will get replaced with muscle. The scale will drop digits at a slower rate! If you are not massively overweight, and the scale drops radically, the initial reaction might be excitement, but precious muscle is being lost…a cornerstone of fat burning! When pants fit looser, when measurements shrink, or if you simply like what you see in the mirror…it is cause to celebrate! I want to challenge women everywhere to get in the habit of excitement over small changes, even in the scale. Realize that this is a good indication that your body is in the other room, quietly building that Lincoln log cabin, beautiful and unique to only you!
