66. Eliminating Scale Drama

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 66 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, sports nutritionist personal trainer health, and fitness expert, and weight loss coach for runners. And today, I’ve got a very fun topic. Very fun, I’m being a little sarcastic. You may not think this is very fun. I think it’s fun. Eliminating scale drama.

So I’ve seen a lot of social media posts and, and comments on posts lately where people are talking about the scale. And they’re sharing their frustration around the scale. So people are weighing themselves and if the scale isn’t moving in the right direction, they get all down on themselves, they feel depressed, they feel disappointed. And and a lot of times they just give up. All right.

So they’re creating all this drama for themselves because of a number on a device that is used to measure your body weight. Right? And then the suggested solution to the problem is to just don’t weigh yourself, you know, weigh yourself less often or don’t do it at all. And to me, this doesn’t make any sense.

If you’re having an emotional experience around a number on the scale. Does avoiding the scale really solve anything? No. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to dole out a little bit of tough love. I love you guys, but sometimes I gotta get tough with you. I want to explain exactly what scale drama is, how it is impacting your life, and how to eliminate all of that scale drama for good. All right, stay with me, you’re gonna like this one or not. It’s okay though.

If you haven’t already done it, please come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a fun group of positive runners who are there to support each other, and encourage each other. We talk about our goals, we share our experiences, we ask questions, and it’s fun, and we have a good time. So just come find us on Facebook. The podcast and the Facebook group kind of go hand in hand.

So I do a little bit of teaching in the Facebook group as well it kind of goes along with the stuff I teach you on the podcast. So definitely check out the Facebook group because you’ll get a good well-rounded feel for exactly what it is I’m teaching here and it’s a good adjunct to the podcast.

Also, spring enrollment is now open for the Running Lean monthly coaching group. This is my monthly membership program. In a support group where you get everything you need to make lasting changes to your health and fitness. We’re talking about knowledge, support, and accountability.

I talked about these three things last week in the podcast, right. And the Running Lean monthly coaching group, I created because it has all three of those things in one place. So you get the knowledge, which is my entire library of online training materials, and self-paced videos that you can go through and learn at your own pace.

Like the weight loss training course for runners, this is like everything you need to know about becoming fat-adapted, what to eat, what not to eat, how to break through weight-loss plateaus, how to manage hunger, and cravings, and so much more. You can go through all of this at your own pace. And then start implementing what you learned and start getting some results.

But then, if you have questions or struggles or something doesn’t make sense to you, you can bring all of that to the group, okay. And that’s where the support piece comes in. So we have this group of people that are all in this together, right, we’re all doing this together.

Of course, you get my expertise and my experience as a sports nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a master life coach, but it’s not just about me, it’s about the support from a community of people like you. Some people have some good experiences they can share.

You know, we share our experience, our strength is our hope with each other, you know, we’re vulnerable, we share with what we’re struggling with, and we offer our support or encouragement, and we lift each other up, and we help each other. This is the power of the group.

When we do try to do some hard things on our own. It’s hard. It’s challenging, it’s frustrating, but when we do hard things together, it’s motivating. It’s energizing, we’re much more likely to succeed.

And then the third piece is the accountability piece. Showing up in this group means you’re going to be held accountable to stay on track and move towards your goals. You know, if you want to make changes last you have to have accountability. You’re much more likely to stick with a healthy eating plan or an exercise regimen if you have to report to the group and say, yeah, I did what I said I was going to do. That’s powerful.

Okay, so the three biggest reasons why I created this group is because it has the knowledge, support, and accountability all in one place. All right, we do live group coaching via zoom. All the group coaching calls are recorded and archived. So you can always go back and watch something you missed, or rewatch something.

And we have a lot of fun, I believe, and making big changes in our lives, like changing our diet, losing weight, you know, getting stronger, getting faster can be fun, and enjoyable. We don’t have to suffer our way to good health. Right. So the group aspect of this program makes all of this a lot more fun.

So the spring enrollment is open. Now, I don’t open this group very often, maybe once a quarter. So if you want to take advantage of this, is this something you’ve been thinking about? Now’s the time to do it. Okay, I’m going to be closing the doors at the end of the day. On Sunday, April, the fourth, so 11:59 pm, Sunday, April 4, done for a few months.

Start today, and think about how much further you will be in three or four months. Right? Do you want to just be where you are today in three or four months? Or do you want to be like three or four months into a healthy eating regimen? The choice is yours. Always. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.

Learn how to dial in your nutrition, make healthy eating a way of life, become a badass fat-adapted, bonk-proof runner, and have fun doing it. I promise you it is fun. runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us. It’ll be fun, I promise.

Okay, let’s get into this topic today, which is eliminating scale drama. Like I said earlier, sometimes I gotta be a little tough with you guys got to dole out a little bit of tough love. And today is one of those days.

So I’ve been seeing a lot of posts out there in the Facebook group and on other Facebook groups and just in on social media in general posts and comments about the scale. You know, why you should or should not weigh yourself and how often you should weigh yourself.

Even people suggest that you never weigh yourself just stop doing it. It’s too frustrating. And I have these conversations at least once a day with people, sometimes clients who get frustrated. And today I want to make my stance on this topic very clear. Right? Not everyone is going to agree with me on my approach. And that’s totally fine with me.

We all have our own opinions, we get to decide what’s best for ourselves. Okay, if you have a different idea, a different way of doing it. Awesome. You do you, but at least be open to hearing me out today. Because I think I think we could all use a little help around this issue, this issue of scale drama.

So what is scale drama? Scale, drama is all that stuff. You tell yourself what the number on the scale means about you. So let’s say you start eating healthier, you’re exercising, you’re making some healthy changes in your life, and you’re starting to feel pretty good, right? You’re feeling pretty good about yourself.

And then you step on the scale, and you haven’t lost any weight. You know, let’s say your goal is to lose 40 pounds. And you’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks and you feel good. And you get on the scale and it hasn’t moved. Or maybe it went up a pound. And then this is where all the drama comes in.

You have all these stories that you start telling yourself all these thoughts come up all these feelings come up. It’s so frustrating. This is not working. Oh no, I’m gonna have a bad day. This is so disappointing. This is depressing. This whole thing is just stupid. Screw it, I give up. And have you ever had any of these thoughts or feelings about the number that you see on the scale? I know you have, we all have.

I started so many different diets and quit them because I was having all these frustrating feelings. It was depressing to me. It didn’t I didn’t think it was working. And I did that I like stopped weighing myself, man.

Maybe I weighed myself once a week. And then then I was just frustrated that one time a week. You know what I mean? It didn’t help. So this is where this is what I’m talking about when I talk about scale drama. It’s all the stories and all the stuff we make up about what all this means about us. Okay.

So when people start doling out this advice, like only weigh yourself once a week or only weigh yourself once a month. only weigh yourself right after you’ve run 20 miles because that always looks good. Or just stop weighing yourself at all. Their intentions are good with this kind of advice. But honestly, I think this is misguided.

The idea here is that if you only weigh yourself every now and then you’re only going to feel disappointed or frustrated or depressed every now and then. Right? So it’s like, if you avoid the scale, except for once a month, you can like sneak up on it. When all the stars are aligned and you’ll hopefully get the number that will make you finally feel good about yourself.

So you wait a month, and you’re doing all the right things. At least you think you are. And then you step on the scale. You’re like, you sneak up on it, you step on it really fast. And you’re like, dang it, I’m up two pounds, then all that frustration comes back, the disappointment comes back, the depression all comes rushing back.

But you’re only doing it once a month. So like this is a much better plan, right? No, this is dumb to me, right? I don’t think this makes any sense at all. You can’t sneak up on the scale, right? You’re not looking at this from the right place, you’re not looking at the problem, the scale is not the real problem.

I don’t even say your current weight isn’t even the problem has nothing to do with how much you weigh. The real problem is how you think, and how you feel about yourself. All of this drama that you have around the scale, that’s all you. You create the drama, all the sadness, all the frustration, all the disappointment you’re experiencing. Those are all emotions.

And we know that emotions are always caused by thoughts. So if we’re feeling emotions about ourselves, it’s because we have these thoughts about ourselves. This is such a pervasive issue. I get it and these emotions are very strong, right?

They even create issues around your self-worth. I hear people say things like this all the time, like, they don’t feel like they’re good enough. Based on a number on a scale, you know, they’re comparing themselves to other people, or to where they think they should be.

You know, because they gained three pounds, they’re not good enough, you end up basing your own worthiness, your self-worth, on a number on a bodyweight measuring device, this is insane. A number on a scale cannot tell you how worthy you are. Because here’s a fact, for all of you. You were 100% born worthy. What the scale can tell you as the scale can tell you how much you weigh like it’s just a tool to measure the weight of your entire body.

The scale can tell you how much your bones, your skin, your organs, your muscles, your blood, your fat, and your hair weigh, that’s it. And every part of your body is made up of water, your body is actually 60% water at least sometimes up to 70% water. So 60% of the weight we’re looking at is actually water anyway, right?

So how much your bones and your skin and your organs weigh has nothing to do with your worthiness as a human being. It has nothing to do with how beautiful and amazing you are. It has nothing to do with whether or not you are enough. Because you were born enough. How much do you weigh? It’s just a data point, right?

It’s just a fact like your shoe size or how tall you are doesn’t mean you’re a good person or a bad person. It’s just data unless you make it mean something. It’s like saying, oh, my feet are so big. And I’m so short. It’s so frustrating. I’m like a hobbit, by the way. The hobbits were the real heroes of that story.

Okay, at the end of Return of the King, after Eric Aragorn gets crowned king, everybody’s bowing to him, and he looks to the hobbits and he says, my friends, you bow to no one. Oh my god, that gives me chills every time I love, love, love that movie.

Doesn’t mean anything. But what are you making it mean? What are you making that number on the scale mean about you? We have these thoughts like it’s not working. I’m a failure. I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. I’ll never lose weight. But none of this is true unless you make it true.

None of this is true unless you believe it. You always have a choice in what you believe about yourself. Right? If you believe it It’s not working, you’ll find evidence that it’s not working like a number on a scale, it went up, and so you quit. If you believe you’ll never lose weight, you won’t, promise you.

If you believe you’re a failure, you will always fail. Always. I hope you’re starting to see that this all sounds pretty insane. If you’re experiencing any of this drama, and I know we all have at some point or another if you’re having a good day or a bad day, and you’re determining your self-worth, based on some arbitrary number on a $29 bathroom scale, we’ve got to fix this. Okay, we have to fix this.

The scale is just a measuring device. There are other measuring devices out there. Like if you really want to know about body composition, you can do girth measurements, where you measure your waist and arms and thighs, you do some calculations, you can do skinfold thickness measurements, bioelectrical impedance, hydrostatic weighing, like a bod pod, you can do a DEXA scan, all of these things will give you data. They’re all just numbers. Again, they don’t mean anything about you.

But having this info can help you to make decisions about what’s working, what’s working with your nutrition and exercise program, and what isn’t. But that’s all I can do. It can’t tell you whether you’re a good person or a bad person, it can’t determine if you’re going to have a good day or a bad day. Why do we do this to ourselves?

What do we do about this, though? Like, how do we eliminate the scale drama? So the first thing I’ll tell you is just stop it, stop doing it. Stop making that number on the scale mean something about you, it doesn’t mean anything about you. Okay, it’s just a number. It’s just data. And we’ll talk about this in a minute, like what we can do with that data, but just stop making it mean something, okay?

So here’s how we do it like, this is where people will disagree with me. My suggestion to you is this, weigh yourself every single day, do it at the same time every day, record your weight in a log or a journal or an app, whatever is easy for you.

And then you’re going to this stuff is going to come up, you’re going to feel disappointed, frustrated, depressed, whatever, just sit back and like, let that stuff come up. Okay, it will come up, and that’s fine.

But here’s what I want you to understand. This is important. Every single day, your weight will fluctuate every single day. It always will from now until the end of time, your weight will go up, and it will go down every single day. You just have to accept this. I have never seen anybody lose weight, whether it was five pounds, or 50 pounds, or 100 pounds, and I’ve helped people lose all that kind of weight; I’ve never seen it just go straight down from one day to the next.

Always down, down, down down. Never ever, ever works that way. Okay, so let’s just accept this. I’ve been recording my weight every day for like a year now. And it still goes up and down. One to three pounds every single day. But I’ve maintained the same weight for months and months and months.

Like it’s just not a problem. But it does go up and it goes down and it goes up and it goes down. Sometimes I know why sometimes I have no idea why. And at first, it used to freak me out. It’s like, oh, my gosh, you went up. What does this mean? And maybe it’s not working? Maybe I need to change something. But then it goes down again. And I’m like, oh, okay, good. Yeah.

But then it just keeps happening and keeps happening and keeps happening. And you’re like, what? A year later, it still happens every single day. I still write down my weight every single morning. Do you think I make it mean anything now? Heck, no, I do not. It means nothing. Your weight will fluctuate every single day.

So what let’s just embrace it, let’s just accept this fact. Okay. And it has to do with water retention, whether you’re dehydrated or not hormonal changes, hormonal responses, and a slew of other things that I just can’t explain. But just know that it’s normal. It is perfectly normal for the scale to go up and down for your way to go up and down.

So instead of avoiding the scale, here’s my advice to you embrace it. Instead of sneaking up on the scale, face it head-on every single day, and build up some resilience to it. I promise you, if you do this every single day, you’re gonna see that it’s totally normal for that number to go up and down.

And losing weight is never linear. It’ll always go up and down. Alright, always, always, always; don’t avoid it. Let’s start accepting it. Just create some acceptance around that. And it takes repetition, you just have to keep doing it. Now, of course, you have to deal with the drama. Right? The drama will still be there in the beginning, it’ll get better, but you’re going to have to deal with it, right?

So step one is to just weigh yourself every day, except the fact that your weight will fluctuate every single day, it should trend down, if you’re trying to lose weight, you’re doing it the right way, the way that I recommend. Everybody that works with me, they trend down, it goes up and down, but they’re trending down.

We don’t gain weight. You know, in this nutrition regimen that I help people with, they don’t gain weight, we can keep ratcheting that weight down. But it does go up and down. But over time, it’s trending down. Okay. So step one, weigh yourself every day.

Step two, deal with the drama, get the drama out of your head, and get it onto a piece of paper. Right, think about what you’re making this number mean? What does it mean to you? What’s coming up for you? What do you? What stories are you telling yourself about this? What thoughts and feelings are coming up for you?

Oh, it’s depressing. It’s not working, I’m frustrated, like, Whatever, whatever is coming up, just write it all down, get it all down on the page, we’re creating massive awareness, here’s what we’re doing.

Okay, you’re gonna start to see all these negative thoughts, all these negative emotions you’re experiencing around the scale, you’re gonna see all the drama. And you’re gonna see what your brain is doing. And once you see what your brain is doing, all those stories are making up about this number and what it means about you and doesn’t mean about you, then you can start to deal with it right?

But you have to get it all out. First, you got to see what you’re thinking, right? You got to see what you’re feeling, get it out on the page, and then ask yourself, is this true? Is any of this true? Chances are no, it’s not true.

Also, ask yourself this question. This is a good one. This is a powerful question. What else could this mean about me? So maybe my weight went up? What does that mean? What else could it mean? If it doesn’t mean, it’s not working? What else could it mean? Maybe it means losing weight will take a little more time than I originally thought. Maybe it means that I’m a normal human being.

Maybe it means that I’m committed to making this work no matter what, even if it does go up every now and then. Maybe it means I need to change something. Oh, now we’re onto something here. Okay. We want to use the scale as a tool. I encourage people to weigh themselves every day, create awareness, and see that your weight will fluctuate over time. But then we also use it as a tool to make changes, right.

So if you hit some sort of stall and your weight loss, and you’re trying to break through a stall, and by the way, a true plateau in weight loss is like if you stay at the same number for like two straight weeks. Usually, if you’re at the same number for a couple of days, that’s not a plateau.

People tell me this all the time. They’re like, my weight hasn’t changed in three days, I’ve hit a plateau. I’m like, no, you haven’t. Let’s give it two weeks. And then we change something. Okay. So if you hit a stall, a true stall, you know, where it’s like two weeks and nothing changes, then we need to make a change, then we’re going to change something, right?

We can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results, right? We got to make some changes. So we use the scales feedback. But we can’t see this, this change if we weigh ourselves, you know, once a week or once a month, we won’t be able to keep track of these things, right?

So if we don’t see any changes in two weeks, we’ll change what we eat. We’re changing our macros. We’re changing how much we’re eating, how often we’re eating, what times are eating, whatever we need to change, we’ll make changes.

I’m always tweaking my clients’ nutrition regimen when we hit some sort of stall, and we know this will happen. I know it will happen. It happens with every single person, I expect it. It’s all part of the process. You know, my favorite thing with clients? They probably hate it. But it’s like, this is all a fun experiment, isn’t it? But it’s true. It’s just a fun experiment.

There’s not one solution that works for everyone. So we keep working on it. We keep tweaking things, we keep making changes until we get the results we’re after. We never ever, ever give up. We always use that data as feedback and then we course correct. This is why it’s so important to weigh yourself every day.

You got to notice these trends, and then we can make changes accordingly. If you weigh yourself once a month or whatever, it’s just not enough data. Right? It’s just not going to tell us the whole story. So we want the data so we can, like, you know, do science, you know, this is basically like how we do science where we have a hypothesis, we set up an experiment, we test it, we measure our results, and then we make changes. And we try a different experiment.

Right? There’s no drama in science. There’s no crying in baseball, there’s no drama in science, right? Here’s what I want you to do instead of all the drama. So let’s say we’ve started weighing ourselves every day, we’re starting to get used to it. You know, you start writing down all these feelings that are coming up, you start getting used to that, like you’re starting to, like, see what’s happening with your mind.

And you’re starting to, you know, have a little bit of resilience around all this stuff. We also want to focus on all the other things. Let’s forget about the scale for a minute. Right, your weight going down is just one indicator that you’re becoming healthier. It’s one data point, what about all the other stuff?

You know, we tend to focus just on weight, how much we weigh, but your weight is often the last thing to change. Like there are a number of cool things happening in your body hormones being regulated, blood sugars leveling out, insulin levels coming down. Fat is being used as an energy source. All these things are happening, these amazing changes in your body.

Losing weight is usually the last thing to change. So let’s focus on some of the nonscale victories. You know, you’re feeling better, you’re less bloated, you’re less inflamed, you have more energy, you’re sleeping better. Running is getting easier, your workouts are improving, you’re starting to run faster, and your endurance is improving.

You’re recovering faster from these harder workouts. Your clothes are fitting better, looser, starting to get a little loose, you’re not so hungry all the time. You have improved focus and concentration, maybe you just feel happier. Maybe you just feel better about yourself. These are all amazing, healthy changes.

But we just tend to focus on the scale and then we create all this drama around it. So I want you to stop it with all the scale drama. Okay, just stop it. And hope you still love me. I mean, sometimes I gotta drop a little bit of tough love on you guys. But I hope you still can love me through this stuff.

Stop it with the scale drama. Weigh yourself every day, just get used to it right accept the fact that your weight will fluctuate every day. This is normal, it means you’re a normal human being. How about that doesn’t mean anything negative about you at all. You’re beautiful, you’re worthy, you’re more than good enough. You’re amazing. Focus on the good stuff. Okay. As always, lots of love to every single one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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