Have you ever hung a picture that you really liked and there was something that did not sit just right about the picture? You could not put your finger on it. but something was not right. Then it came to you, you were using the wrong frame for this picture.
We do the same thing every time we put our trust in the scale. Every time you get on your scale you are not seeing the truth. You scale may not be lying to you. but it is definitely misleading you by leaving out some important information. The number the scale shows you determines how many people feel about themselves that day. We often use the scale to determine our self-worth.
Imagine that every morning when you went to work, you had to stand on a machine that judged your worth based on a small part of who you are.
Once your worth was determined, you had to wear a sign on you to let everyone know if you are a good or bad person.
This is similar to what we do to ourselves on a daily basis. We determine our self-worth based on the number that the scale shows us. If the number is higher than we expected, we feel bad and beat ourselves up. If the number is lower than expected, we feel good about ourselves.
This reliance on the scale is reinforced by the food, fitness and fashion industry. Each promotes a certain image of how we should look and how much we should weigh.
Why are we using the “Weight” frame? The weight frame tells us our mass but does not add any insight into the composition of that mass. Two people can weigh the same but look very different and have very different health risks. Weight is a very crude measure of our health and fitness. Relying on weight alone as a measure of our health or self-worth is like driving north from Philadelphia to Canada. We may be going in the right general direction but can still miss our destination by miles.
Weight is important to our health but there is a very wide margin of error when that is the only measure we use. If we have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or high blood sugar levels, and are overweight, then losing 5-10% of our bodyweight can improve our health.
The amount of fat that we carry on our body, especially fat around the waist is also bad for our health. How much fat and where we carry that fat is more important than how much we weigh.
It’s time to shift the conversation from weight to body composition – the amount of muscle and fat that we are carrying on our body. This month we will take a deep dive into the science of changing our body composition, (losing fat weight and gaining muscle) to support our health, fitness and performance.
We will look at how we can permanently change our body composition and health by following the science and pointing out the fallacies and fads that bombard us in the media every day. Stay tuned to our Facebook page and Blog for great information about health, fitness and nutrition.