Next Phase Fitness, LLC

…and why it didn’t ruin my day

Until about one year ago, I was the person who stood backwards on the scale at the doctor so I wouldn’t see the number. No matter what that number was, it would most certainly ruin my day, if not my week and send me spiraling until I felt like the most worthless bag of garbage on the planet. I know I’m not alone in the experience of a simple piece of data having a choke hold on my sense of self worth, and that’s why I’m sharing this story with you.

I’m Gen X. I grew up with Kate Moss and I know that the only thing new about the recent “thigh gap” trend is its moniker. When will we stop marketing tools for self-hatred to each new generation of girls?

Gen X women have been programmed to idealize the waif. But you know what the”waif” ages into? Frailty.

We were taught that an ideal weight is 120 or less, regardless of height, and a size 6 or smaller, even if you inherited child bearing hips and what the youths call a dump-truck. At 5′ 9″ and being that I did indeed inherit the aforementioned hips and dump-truck, I wasted decades trying to achieve what for me is a completely unhealthy standard. At my “thinnest” when I looked in the mirror and the reflection matched what I thought was my ideal, I was 143. I just tipped the scale at 160 and I’m still wearing the same clothes. What?

So Gen X, the generation who babysat themselves is leading the charge to rewriting the rules of aging. So when I saw 160 the other morning, I flinched, I won’t lie. That programming runs deep. But it didn’t shake me to my core. It did not ruin my day and I did not think about again except to marvel in how much progress I’ve made in that area of my life. So how did I get here?

A little over a year ago, after one of those weigh-ins at the doctor, despite my request, the nurse announced my weight loudly to everyone in earshot and it felt like a punch right to the solar plexus. I hadn’t weighed myself in years and to say it was jarring is to put it mildly.

I was furious and continued to feel lower and lower throughout the day until I realized that hiding from the information was no longer the path for me. I needed to find a way to turn that number back into information and not judgement. So here’s what I did.

I bought a scale

I chose one that has the bioimpedence function for the hands and feet that tells you the breakdown of your body composition. These scales are not particularly accurate but they do offer the value of tracking trend lines for more meaningful metrics like body fat percentage and skeletal muscle percentage. It also allowed me to focus on numbers that translate as information without the judgement benchmark weight has. Over time, I practically forget to even look at the actual weight because it’s become meaningless relative to muscle and fat mass.

I weigh myself daily

Other than when I travel, I have weighed myself for 431 consecutive days using this scale. The intention here was exposure therapy and it worked. Familiarity breeds comfort. There’s still some leftover programming that lingers. There’s a part of me that needs to validate that I’m making the progress that’s meaningful to me. So when I look at the segmental muscle balance and see the muscle mass creeping up over time, it feels joyful, as it’s hard earned.

I eat for gains

I hate wasting my time. I have learned that lifting weights is only part of the equation to building muscle. If I don’t provide my body with the right kind of fuel and enough of it, I’m wasting my time in the gym. I’m relatively lean, so for me it’s less likely that I am going to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. I had a couple of regressed moments where I thought I needed to slash calories and I went down to 1700 and it had the opposite of the intended effect, so I had a come to Jesus with myself, bumped back up to 2000 and got my gains back. I’m playing with a reverse diet over the next few months to see what I can build and I’m excited!

Of course the context behind all of this is important. Let it be known that my main activity is weight training. I lift four days per week consistently. I take walks. I intermittently add in agility training and I ride Zwift less consistently than I’d like, but I always prioritize weight training, sleep and nutrition.

So, if the endurance runner that I was five years ago looked at my fitness routine now, she’d be struck with panic and fear at gaining nearly 15 pounds, but she’d have a very skewed understanding of what that meant. If I could, I’d take her by the shoulders, wearing the very same running shorts as her, and remind her that we didn’t have a choice to give up running, but we managed to cultivate a sense of peace that we never did no matter how many miles we ran chasing it.