Day 9: Numbers on a Scale

I know that numbers on a scale are not an absolute measure of health. There are plenty of skinny people with diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease and many health problems typically thought of as “fat” problems. However, I must say it is quite satisfying to watch the numbers get smaller. Those numbers have also helped snap me into reality and face the fact that that in the past three years I have gained over 40lbs, tipping the scale at 180lbs. I have lost and kept off some of that, but I am still stuck in the overweight category, and the thing is, I feel overweight.

The other day I was looking through old photos from high school and the early college years when I was around 120-130lbs. Believe it or not, I thought I was fat back then because I had never actually been overweight. Looking back at those photos, I realize that obsessing over 5lbs back then was silly because I looked healthy. Not fat, not skinny, but healthy. My skin was relatively clear for being an awkward teen and I could do things like hike the blue trail on Great Bear mountain(which was basically like a mountain climb it was so steep) and fit comfortably into my clothes. Now I get grumpy and tired when I have to walk too long outside and have had to purchase an almost entirely new wardrobe (although I’ll admit I did still keep a few “skinny” clothes to motivate myself to lose weight) to fit the larger me.

I think part of the problem is that back then I wasn’t thinking about my body in terms of what it could do but in terms of how other people saw it. Now that I am more comfortable with myself and understand who I am a bit better I see how messed up that is. Now I try not to focus so much on the numbers on the scale but focus more on how I feel and what my body can do.

For example, today I did an arm workout that was a combination of pushups(you can find the workout here, fitnessblender is amazing and where I get 99% of my workouts from and you should check them out here if you haven’t already). I have tried this before and had to modify almost all the exercises for every round(there are three rounds), but this morning I was able to get through 2 rounds of all the exercises doing the hardest version possible before I got fatigued and had to modify a couple of the exercises to keep my form. Not only that, but at the end  of the workout I added an additional full body workout(found here) for an extra calorie burn. I can tell that my body is getting stronger and healthier and that is exciting.