268: 5 Things To Remember When The Scale Is Up

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 268. 

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and today's topic is a really good one because I feel like it's an experience that most of us are very familiar with, and that is the experience of hopping on the scale, looking down at the number that pops up, and having it be higher than it was the day before. And I see this as kind of the paths diverged. And there are a couple of ways that you can go at this pivotal moment, and I want to talk about it. I want to talk about how we can make the best decisions in this moment, how we can deal with some of the emotions that come up, and some of the things that are really, really important to remember when that number on the scale is higher than you wish it was. My goal is for you to have a list of five things that you can run through so that when you step on that scale and the numbers up, you can deal with it in a productive manner. And I've even taken these five things and we've made them into a really cute printable that you can print out and actually put next to your scale. So if you really are serious about remembering these five things when you step on the scale, go ahead and go over to the show notes. You can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/268. It's just the number of this podcast episode. And when you go to that page, there will be a download button, and you can just go download that free printable, print it out, put it next to your scale so that you can really ingrain this into your memory and remember these things when you step on the scale.  

Understanding the scale 02:36 

Okay, so first, before we dive into the five things that I want you to remember, we have to address the elephant in the room, and that is Amber, why are we even stepping on the scale in the first place? There is a very loud majority on social media that feels very strongly that we should stay away from things that make us feel bad. And if the scale makes you feel bad, then why are you even stepping on it in the first place? And this hashtag kind of came about on social media. It's like #tossthescale. We have people if you search through social media, you'll see people, like, running over their scale with a car or smashing it with a hammer. And it's all kind of trying to push this idea of, like, the scale makes you feel bad. So why are you stepping on it? Just like, get rid of the scale. It doesn't matter. It doesn't tell you anything. And it's just something that you don't need in your life. Now, I do not think that everybody needs to step on the scale. I'm not here to push or force you to step on the scale or say that you should step on the scale. But I do think that the scale has valuable information for us. Is it complete? No. Does it tell us everything? No. Is it the only data point that we should be looking at when it comes to reaching our fitness goals? Absolutely not. But that's not the same as saying it provides zero information or zero data and it makes you feel bad about yourself. So you should just toss the scale and get rid of it. I think that the scale can provide important information, it can provide feedback. And if we can look at it from a logical standpoint and get away from this emotional standpoint, which is some of the things that we're going to talk about during this episode, then the scale can be a really valuable piece of information that helps you to make decisions about your journey, about what you're doing, and about how your body is responding to the different things that you're doing.  

So if you don't want to step on the scale and you want to toss a scale and you never want to step it again another day in your life, you absolutely don't have to. I am not here to tell you that you should be stepping on a scale. You do your boo like, that is fantastic. But if you are somebody who is searching or seeking after a fitness goal, you have some sort of aesthetic goal, you have a weight loss goal, you have a body composition goal, you have a performance goal, you're trying to gain muscle. All of those goals can be helped with the data point that the scale provides you. And so, yes, there is a reason for people to step on scales. It is not a worthless tool. It is not a worthless thing that everybody should just get rid of. There is value in it. Now, we have to make sure that we're looking at it accurately and appropriately. But I think it goes a little bit far just saying that nobody should ever step on a scale for the rest of their life. So this podcast episode is for people who would like to keep stepping on the scale for whatever reason. We don't need to judge that person's reason. But they would like to keep utilizing the scale because they would like the data that the scale provides. But they would like a way to be able to deal with that data, maybe less emotionally, and be able to coach themselves and walk themselves through that experience when the scale is up and not get into an emotional space where you're feeling super bad about yourself. That's who this podcast episode is for.  

1. Asking yourself the question, What am I making this mean? 05:52

Okay, so you step on the scale, the scale is up. What is the first thing that I want you to remember? It's actually a question that I want you to ask yourself. First of all, I think the first thing to notice is that oftentimes we have emotions or feelings that arise immediately when we take in information, and that's normal and natural and is not usually controlled by our logical mind. Like, those emotions come up very automatically. It's part of our automatic part of our brain, and we don't need to necessarily control those emotions. So if you step on the scale, you see a number and you are immediately flooded with a negative emotion about this number, that's okay, we don't have to berate ourselves or say that you're bad. We can start to notice that. And then I want you to follow it up with this really powerful question, what am I making this number mean? That is a really valuable question to ask yourself in this moment and to get really clear about. A number is just a number. If I just threw out a number and I said 5,362, is there any emotion with that number? No, it's just a number. It's not bad, it's not good. It's just like it's just a number. But what happens is we tend to tie numbers to other things and we make it mean certain things. So if I say I don't even remember what number I said, but let's say it's 5362, and I said, that's the amount of money that I'm going to give you if you give me a high five. Like, you probably feel a lot of positive emotion. But if I say 5,362 and that's the number of times that somebody is going to punch you in the face, there's a lot of a negative emotion about that. So numbers in and of themselves, like, don't generate emotion. But we have a lot of context around numbers. We have a lot of meaning around certain numbers. And that's really important to get familiar with because it's really helpful to know it's not the number that is making you feel a certain way. It is what you are making that number mean that is creating the emotions in you. And so taking a step back and asking yourself the question, I feel negative emotion when I look at this number. Why? What am I making that number mean. Now, oftentimes things that will come up will be around, oh, I'm a loser, or, oh, I screwed up yesterday, or I'm never going to be successful, or look at me. I you know, here I go again, not, like, gaining more weight or, you know, some sort of, like, negative thought pattern that we're getting into. You're making it mean if the scale is up, you're making it mean something that is generating those negative feelings and those negative emotions. And it's really valuable to take a step back and think about, what are you making that mean? The more that you can start to identify the negative self talk and the stories that you're telling yourself and the meaning that you're creating around these numbers, the better you're going to be able to really investigate it and figure out if that's what you want to keep telling yourself. So asking yourself that question, what am I making this mean? And then thinking about it and really responding to that question, am I making this mean that I'm never going to be successful? Am I making this mean that, oh, my gosh, look, I've gained fat. Am I making this mean, oh, man, I really screwed up yesterday, and I'm such a loser. Any of those things that you say to yourself are, of course, going to make you feel negative.  

Challenging Negative Emotions and Developing a Growth Mindset 09:31 

So it's not the number that's making you feel negative. It's what you're making that number mean. And that's a really powerful difference. If it's the number that is making you feel negative, then I totally get why you would throw the scale out. You never step on the scale. It's like, that number made me feel something. No, that number didn't make you feel anything. That number is just a number. And you made that number mean something, and that generated the negative feelings that generated the emotion in you. And when we can create that distance, it's not the number. It's what you're making that number mean. You have a lot more power over that. You don't have any power over what that number is on the scale. You don't have as much power I should say, you do have a lot of power over what you're making it mean. That's within your control. And so when we can regain that control and that power, it is really empowering to feel like you can change that. So identifying those negative thoughts and those negative stories that you're telling yourselves allows you the opportunity to challenge them and to kind of rewrite the story. So if you step on the scale and the scale is up a pound, and you're like, oh, my gosh, I gained so much fat, and I'm such a loser, and we can recognize that that's why we feel negative emotion, well, now we can challenge that, and we can say, am I really a loser? Does 1lb really make me a loser? Like, if I had gained 0.9lbs, I wouldn't be a loser, but now it's a pound, now I'm a loser, right, we can start to challenge some of those assumptions that we are making and kind of work ourselves through this, of recognizing, hey, I have a lot more control over what I am telling myself about this number that's going to impact how I feel. A really fantastic episode to listen to, if you haven't yet, is episode 246. It's about changing your mindset. And I interviewed a woman named Casey, and it's fantastic. But this idea of a fixed versus a growth mindset, you may have heard about it. There's a really good book written by Carol Dwack called Mindset the New Psychology of Success that goes deeper into it. But just understanding that our mindset is not fixed, a lot of times we think that this is just the way things are. This is just the way that I am. But understanding that in reality, we actually are able to grow. We as humans are able to evolve, we are able to change. And that when we realize that just because it's the way that it is today doesn't mean that that's always the way that it has to be, and that we can actually shift our mindset, we can actually work on that, we can actually grow it, we can actually be intentional about that. And this is an opportunity for you to be able to practice that. That growth mindset, of being able to change the way that you're speaking to yourself. Okay, so that's number one. Asking yourself the question, what am I making this mean?  

2. Weight Doesn’t Equal Fat 12:15

The second thing to remember is that weight doesn't equal fat. If you understand this and you really understand this, it is a game changer for being able to improve your relationship with the scale. So many of us have grown up with a one to one equation between the scale going up and the fat going up and the scale going down and the fat going down. And it's not your fault. It's like what all diets tell you, right? It's like, how do we measure the effectiveness of a diet? How much weight did you lose? You've just grown up being told for all of your life that when the scale goes up a pound, that you have gained a pound of fat, and when the scale goes down a pound, you have lost a pound of fat. And that is just not how science works. The scale weighs all of your body. It is not just a measure of the amount of fat that you have on your body. Included in that number is how much your bones weigh, how much your organs weigh, how much water weight you're carrying, how much your muscles weigh, how much your fat weighs. All of those things are included in your weight. Now, yes, most of those things don't really change day to day. Like, your bone weight is not changing day to day. Your organ weight is not changing day to day. So your fat can change day to day. Your muscle can change day to day, although it is a slow process, but fat loss and fat gain are actually a slow process as well. What changes the most on a day to day basis is your water weight. So much of your body is made up of water intracellular extracellular in your bloodstream, like all over your body. Your body is mostly water, and water shifts in and out of your body a lot. So the water fluctuations that we have in our body are what cause a lot of the swings that you're seeing on the scale. Anytime. And I always tell my clients this anytime you are seeing a fast shift on the scale, either up or down, it's always water, because fat loss and fat gain are a slow process. Muscle loss and muscle gain, slow process. Water loss and water gain, fast process. So any time you step on the scale and you're 3lbs up from yesterday water, anytime you step on the scale and you are 3lbs down from yesterday water, or at least a majority of that is water. It's why people who go on keto diets end up having so much weight loss, especially initially. It is because they are losing a ton of water. Our body stores carbohydrates with water. And so if you're eating less carbohydrates and your body is storing less carbohydrates, it's also going to get rid of a lot of that water that it was storing with the carbohydrates. And so you're going to see a big drop on the scale. That does not mean that you lost a bunch of fat because you went keto. It means you lost a bunch of water. And so even just understanding the scientific principle that fat loss is slow, fat gain is slow. Muscle loss is slow. Muscle gain is slow. Anytime you are seeing big swings on the scale, it is mostly water. And just understanding that can give you so much power.  

Understanding Maintenance Weight, Interpreting Fluctuations on the Scale 15:40 

I have my clients weigh themselves daily, and there's a reason for that. One of the biggest reasons is, one, I want them to see those daily fluctuations. I want them to see that their weight is going to fluctuate on a day to day basis, that there is, again, not a one to one relationship with what they're doing and the number going down on the scale that their body is going to sometimes be retaining more water, sometimes losing more water. Water balance in our body is a very complex process. It is influenced by many, many factors. It is influenced by Cortisol. It's also influenced by the amount of sleep that you get, which also impacts Cortisol, which impacts water balance. It's also impacted by the amount of salt that you are eating. It's also impacted by the amount of carbs you're eating. It's also impacted a lot by hormones, hormones impact our water balance. So it's impacted by the amount of water that you drink, the type of food that you eat. Like, there's just so many things that impact our water balance that any normal person on a day to day basis is going to fluctuate. It's also why we say when you're in maintenance, maintenance is not a number. Maintenance is not like I'm going to maintain at 134lbs. Maintenance is a range. Because even if you are the same body composition, meaning you have the same fat and the same muscle, you can go up 3 to 5lbs and you can go down 3 to 5lbs, and you still have the same body composition, and all you're just seeing is fluctuations of water in and out. And so maintenance is always going to be a range of weight. It's never going to be just like I maintain at 134. It's going to be like I maintain between a range of 130 and 137. And for some people it's a smaller range, and for some people it's a much larger range. You know, things like menstruation can also impact water weight and water flowing in and out. So we got to stop looking at the scale and thinking that it equates to how much fat we have on our body and instead remember that the scale is weighing so many more things than just fat. And anytime we're seeing a big fluctuation on the scale, it's always, always, always going to be water.  

The other reason that I have clients weigh on a daily basis is because then we can have them take an average over a week's time anytime. If you do any statistics or any scientific research, you know that if something fluctuates a lot, then what we want to do is kind of smooth out those fluctuations. And we do that by taking the average. And so a lot of times I hear people who are only weighing once a week, and what they're not seeing is those fluctuations. And so they're just comparing this week's number to last week's number. And now it's up or down, and they don't really have any context for what was happening all throughout the week and what fluctuations were occurring. And so instead, I like to help my clients take a daily weight, weighing themselves in the morning the same time before eating anything, after having peed in the morning, so that we're taking out as many variables as possible, keeping it as consistent as possible, and then having that daily scale weight and then averaging it out. So what we're doing is we're smoothing out some of those peaks and valleys of just that normal fluctuation of water weight in and out of your body and then being able to compare this week's average to last week's average. And that's going to give us a much clearer idea of which way we are trending. Are we trending down? Are we trending up? And that's what I always like to look at, is like trends. Where is your body trending. Are we trending in the right direction? If we're trending in the right direction, we keep going. If we're not trending in the right direction, then maybe we need to make some adjustments. 

The fact that weight doesn't equal fat, and that is the exact reason why I also don't have clients just use the scale as their only data point. We want to pull in as many data points as possible from our body so that we can get a clear and accurate picture of what's going on. The scale has a one to one relationship with fat, but it does give us a piece of information. However, it's an incomplete piece of information. So we want to make sure we're pulling other data points, like measurements, like progress pictures, like other nonscale victories, to be able to get a complete picture with what's going on in our body. Are we trending in the right direction? That's the question I'm always helping clients to ask themselves. Are we trending in the right direction? If yes, keep going. If we're not trending in the right direction, that's when we start to make adjustments and tweak things to be able to get us in the right direction. And that process is what I teach clients inside of Macros101. So if you want to be able to learn to become a macro scientist, be able to analyze the feedback from your data, make adjustments, tweak it so that you can move forward and be able to get in the right direction towards the goals that you have. Definitely get on the waitlist. You can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist. We reopen doors for Macros101 on April 3. And if you're listening to this after April 3, you can go ahead and get on the waitlist for the next time that we open Macros101. We open it twice a year, and we always let those people on the waitlist know first.  

3. Resist Being Reactive And Instead Get Curious 20:48

Okay, the third thing that you're going to tell yourself when you step on the scale and it's up, you are going to resist being reactive, and you are instead going to get curious. So what do I mean by reactive? A lot of times, many of us will see a number on the scale, and we will immediately get into a reactive mode like, we need to fix it. And so this is where we step on the scale, we see a number we don't like, today, I'm not going to eat anything or step on the scale, see a number that we don't like, today, I'm not going to eat any sugar, or I'm only going to eat 800 calories, or I'm going to do an extra hour of cardio. We get very reactive with this, of like, I see this thing, I don't like it, and now I got to I got to fix it. It's a problem. I got to change it. And it's so important to understand that in our brain, we have two parts of our brain. We have lots of parts of your brain, but two major parts of your brain. We have the prefrontal cortex that is the logical part of our brain, where it's our thinking part of our brain, and then we have the autonomic part of our brain. And that is where our habits are based. It's actually where we run most of our lives on. It's not anything that we're consciously aware of. It's like that subconscious processing part of our brain, and emotions come from that subconscious part of our brain. It's not part of the logical, rational part of our brain. And we make not great decisions when we are in the emotional part of our brain. We make much better decisions when we are in the frontal cortex, when we are processing it, when we are thinking logically and rationally, we make much better decisions. And yet what happens is a lot of times we step on the scale, we feel negative emotion. We in this emotional state. And then we make decisions about how we're going to spend the rest of our day, what food we're going to eat, what workouts we're going to do. And we're making all these decisions from a very reactionary, emotional place. And that never is going to be the smartest place to make a decision from. So resist being reactive, resist going into a reactive cut, resist adding cardio, resist cutting out food groups, resist cutting out carbs, resist all of that and instead get curious. Take a step back. You've said, what am I making this mean? You're reminding yourself that weight doesn't equal fat, and then you're getting curious about what may have caused the increase. And this is where it can be really helpful to know some of the things that directly impact the weight on the scale that have nothing to do with fat. I've mentioned some of these before, but let's go through them again. If you eat more salt the day before, salt is going to cause you to retain water. So I especially see this when people go out to eat, because there tends to be more salt in the food at restaurants. And so oftentimes when I go out to eat the next day, the scale will be up, and it's simply because there was more salt in the food that I ate. So maybe you ate more salt yesterday. I already mentioned carbohydrates that our body stores carbohydrates with water. Each gram of carb is stored with like, 3 to 4 grams of water. And so if you ate more carbs yesterday than normal again on a weekend and you ate more carbs, or you had a hard workout and you ate more carbs, you will see an increase on the scale often simply because your body is storing those carbs with carbohydrates. 

The Impact of Diet, Exercise, and Hormones on Water Retention 24:05 

Speaking of hard workouts, if you have a really challenging workout and you've pushed your body and maybe you did a heavy leg day, oftentimes that can cause a spike on the scale the next day. And the reason is because the process of lifting weights is actually causes micro tears in your muscle. There's actually damage that's done to your muscle when you're lifting the weight. And that's intentional. You're trying to do that because then what happens is your body comes back and it repairs that muscle tissue and it makes it a little bit stronger so that it can withstand that strain the next time around. So that whole process is an inflammatory process. That's how our body heals and repairs things, is through an inflammatory process. We release these tissue factors that call in these inflammatory parts of our body to repair that tissue. And so that causes more water retention because inflammation brings with it a lot of water. And so if you have a heavy leg day or you did a heavy workout the day before, oftentimes the scale can be up because of that. Most of us probably listening to this are female and many of us menstruate. And that can definitely cause big swings to the amount of water weight that you have on board. And a lot of women, this is another reason that tracking your weight on a day to day basis, it can be so helpful for women because they can see on a repeated basis, oh, I've now seen enough times the pattern that on the week during my period, I personally see a three pound gain on the scale. Like every month, I see it every month. I've seen that pattern replicated. And so when I see that three pound gain on the scale, I can kind of walk myself through and be like, of course I expected that because I've seen that pattern. So menstruation can absolutely play around with, you know, how much water weight you have on. I mentioned the hormone cortisol, which is our stress hormone. So anything that causes stress, whether it be interpersonal stress or stress at your job, or stress in the gym or not sleeping or having a migraine or anything that's causing stress, can increase the amount of cortisol that we have in our body. And cortisol increases water retention. So did I not get a lot of sleep last night? Have I been under extra stress or the extra stress yesterday? Is that something that could be playing out on the scale today? How much water you drink yesterday can be a factor. How hot it is, the hotter it is, the more you're sweating, the more you're losing water weight. Have you been constipated? constipation is going to cause that that scale number to go up. I am sure that there are more that I am forgetting, but the whole point is, is that the more that you can walk yourself through these and get curious and think about, hey, what's been happening the last day or a couple of days or last week? And can I see. A very obvious reason for why the scale might be up, why I'm retaining more water and reminding yourself that it doesn't necessarily mean that you've gained more fat. 

4. Your Other data is going to make things a lot clearer, and then you can make a rational decision about what to do next 27:02

All right, number four is I want you to remind yourself that your other data will make things clearer. Now, hopefully, you're taking other data, and if you aren't, this is this is your invitation to do so. Because if the scale is up again, that is one data point. And one of the things that I'm always reminding my Macros101 students, if you want to be a macro scientist, scientists never look at a single data point. They're never just looking at one data point. They're always pulling in a lot of data points and analyzing them in lots of different ways and figuring out they're trying to let the numbers tell the story of what's going on. And that's the same thing that, as a macro scientist, you want to be able to do with your body. And in order to do that, you got to have more than one data point, my friend. So this is why I'm always pushing my clients to not only take their daily scale weight, but to take weekly measurements to make sure that they're taking their waist and their chest and their hips and their thighs and their arm measurements so that we can track those data points as well. To also make sure that they're taking progress pictures, I suggest either weekly or biweekly progress pictures so that you can have that data point as well. And then there's also things that we call non scale victories that we want to pay attention to as well. How are your clothes fitting? How are you feeling in the morning? Are you feeling leaner? How are your rings fitting? Those are really important data points as well. They're a little bit more qualitative, right? They're less quantitative, but they're also data points, and there are things that we want to pay attention to. 

Analyzing Body Feedback to Achieve Results  28:37 

So the scale is up one day, remind yourself that looking at the other data points will make things clearer. Now, one of the things that's really cool about when you really understand how to read and analyze feedback from your body and know what to do based off of the numbers that you've seen, this is what I teach in Macros101. I teach you how to be the macro scientist so that you can look at the data, you can analyze it, you can figure out what's going on, and then you can make adjustments and tweaks based off of how your body is responding. That is the process that's going to be able to get you the results that you want. And that's what I teach you how to do inside of Macros101. So when you're looking at your other data points, you're asking yourself the question, what is the data trying to communicate to me when I put all these puzzle pieces together? What's the overall picture that my body is communicating to me. And the cool thing is, if you are a macro scientist and you understand this process, then even if the picture that your body is communicating to you that what you're doing isn't driving you in the right direction, that's still okay, because now you know that. Now you have that information, and now you know how to make adjustments and tweaks so that you can get on the right path. So I talked earlier about how I'm always encouraging my clients to look at trends and to look at the way that your body is trending. Are you trending in the right direction? And obviously, we want your body to trend in the right direction, but even if your body isn't trending in the right direction right now, that's helpful. That's actually really great to know, because then we can say, okay, I've been doing X, Y, and Z. My body is not responding in the way that I would like. So now I have this feedback and information, and I know how to make adjustments and tweaks so that I can get in on, you know, on the trend that I want to get on. And again, that is this idea of being a macro scientist. When you know how to make those tweaks and you know how to make those adjustments and you know what levers to pull and when to pull them and how to pull them, then you're really empowered in your journey to be able to get the results that you want. 

5. Your Worth Is Not Found In The Scale 30:41

All right, last one. The last thing that I want you to remind yourself if you step on the scale and that scale is up, and this one's probably the most powerful and the most important, I want you to remind yourself that your worth is not found in a number. And I think if we get really deep for a lot of us and we ask ourselves the question, what am I making this mean? A lot of us have put a lot of worth and enoughness and wholeness into a number, as if when we hit 140lbs, then we'll be enough. Then we'll be good enough. And we've wrapped up a whole lot of our personal worthiness into a silly, silly, silly number that most people don't even have an idea of what it is. How many of you guys know exactly how much your mom weighs or your sister weighs or your best friend weighs? And does that really play into the type of person that they are? Sometimes it's really easy for us to wrap ourselves up into a number. And one of the things that I will do to help clients kind of see how we're doing that is I will put that onto somebody else. Do you do that to your sister? If your sister weighs 140, is she now like, you'll listen to her. She's cool. She's enough, but she weighs 141, then you're like, no, sorry, you're a loser. We would never say that about our sister or our child or our friend, but we do that a whole lot with ourselves. So looking at the scale as if it's a measure of your self-worth is obviously very, very problematic. But a lot of us have a lot of ties to that number and our self-worth, and you know there's good reason for that. I think there's a lot of programming in our culture that tries to encourage women to tie those two things together. But just because someone else tells you that you should do it doesn't mean that you actually have to do it, or that it's true or that you should do it. And when we can really separate our worth from the number that you see pop up, the less power that number has over you and the more you're able to again stay in that rational, scientific mind and make decisions. Not based off of emotion. Not based off of feeling like you're not enough. Not based off of I'm such a loser, but based off of what the data is telling you, what your body is communicating to you. And you can make tweaks and adjustments.  

Look, I want you to be able to hit whatever physical goals you have set for yourself. I'm here for all the goals. You want to lose weight, great. You want to get ripped, great. You want to increase your performance, great. You want to be a size seven, six, whatever, great. Like, I am a fan of all goals, but I'm a fan of all goals that aren't tied to whether or not you're worthy. And a lot of us do this, and it's the reason why a lot of us don't like goals is because we've confabulated hitting this goal with being enough, hitting this goal with being worthy. And so then, inherently, if you don't hit that goal, well, who are you? You're not enough. You're not worthy. And so we shy away from setting goals. But when you can set goals, even aesthetic goals, hey, I wanted to get a six pack. That was one of my aesthetic goals. You can say that as a shallow, vein goal, whatever, but I didn't tie my worthiness to it. It was just a fun goal, something I wanted to see what I could do. I just wanted to see what I could achieve. And it became a fun thing to work on. But that's because my worth was not tied to it. I knew that I was enough, whether or not I had a six pack. And I've been in lots of body shapes, and that hasn't impacted me as a human being or me as my importance or my self-worth. And so I think it's just a really helpful reminder of when you see that number, a reminder that this doesn't communicate anything to me about who I am, what I'm capable of, whether I'm worthy, whether I'm lovable whether I can be confident. This number, it's like, no relationship to all of these other things? Yes. Can we use it as a data point to hit some fun goals? Sure, but that's very, very different than saying I have to hit a certain number in order to be okay or enough or lovable or worthy. They're just not the same things.  

Review of the Five Things to Remember 35:34 

All right, so those are the five things that I want you to remember when you step on the scale and that number is up. Number 1, Asking yourself the question, What am I making this mean? Number 2, Weight doesn't equal fat. So if the scale is up, that doesn't necessarily mean you've gained fat. Number 3, Resist being reactive and instead get curious. Number 4, Your other data is going to make things a lot clearer, and then you can make a rational decision about what to do next. And Number 5, Your worth is not found in the scale. Again, we've put these in together into a really cute printable. If you want to print this out and like, literally put it by your scale to help remind yourself of what you can tell yourself the next time that you step on the scale. If you want to get that download and printable, you can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/268. That's the episode number, episode 268. So it's bicepsafterbabies.com/268. And there will be a little button there, and you can get that printable and you can download it and put it next to your scale so that you don't remember these things. They can just be there to remind you when you are stepping on that scale. I hope this episode has been helpful for you. If it has, do me a big favor and leave a rating and review wherever you're listening to this podcast. That is one of the best things that you can do to really think me as a content creator and help the podcast reach more people. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong, because remember, my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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