Gaining… Perspective
So, I believe I mentioned that one of my fitness goals right now is to be stronger.
I am definitely achieving that. I can tell in the definition of the muscles in my legs and arms that the muscles are getting bigger (a bit), but I can really tell in my much improved ability to climb at the climbing gym over the past two months that I have been going. There are things I can do now that would quite simply have had me falling off the wall even 4 weeks ago.
So this is good, right? I set a goal… I am working towards it. Yay fitness!
But…
Muscles, as they grow and get stronger… they also get heavier.
Specifically about 2 pounds heavier quite recently.
Now, I know that I would be much more sane if I were able to toss the scale out. I KNOW! But — I just can’t do it, not yet anyway (work in progress), so I have seen this increase in weight and it has, predictably, set off the old internal alarm bells of “OMG! You are gaining weight! That’s not allowed!”
What’s weird is this weight gain is a result of HEALTHY CHANGES in my life. I know in my thinking brain that this is a GOOD thing. GOOD!
But I have these old messages floating around in my head that tell me if the scale number goes up, that’s BAD! BAD!
So far the thinking brain has been winning the battle against the old messages (Thank you, Fat-O-Sphere, for all the lessons I have learned here!), and I am managing to track the gain as a reasonable result of my increased strength. I am continuing to eat the same amount of food as I am used to and not falling into the trap of “stop eating right now until those ‘extra’ pounds come off! Right now! You naughty person!”
Because if I cut the amount of food I am eating, well, I would not be able to have the energy to keep up with my strength training, and then where would I be? Not gaining strength like I am now, I tell you.
And I was thinking about how this must impact people who are still trapped in that old cycle of thinking. Starting an exercise program and making great progress, but the number on the scale goes up instead of down. They panic and quit a healthy routine because they are told time and again that any time the scale goes up it’s bad, bad, bad. So then the scale goes back down… but what are they losing? Muscle… and strength.
I think this is an important message that we get from HAES. That sometimes you can make healthy changes, and your weight might go UP as a result, or it might go DOWN… but the important thing is the improvement in health and fitness and how you feel… not what the scale says.
All of this pondering and convincing myself that it’s PERFECTLY OK to gain some weight as I increase my muscle mass* has definitely given me a new perspective on the scale. One more step on the road to tossing the thing out altogether, perhaps. Baby steps. (Boy, I seem to be saying that a lot lately!)
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*Yes, I also know that it would be perfectly OK to gain weight even if I weren’t gaining muscle mass… but, in my case, that’s not the case.
The human mind is a marvel to behold. It is able to simultaneously acknowledge the reality of weight gain due to increased lean muscle mass, yet your emotional brain can’t help but panic something so arbitrary as a number on a scale.
It makes me wonder how much advertisers understand the impact they have on a person’s brain when they embark on a campaign to undermine your self-worth. Because they’re pretty damned good at it.
Peace,
Shannon
What I used to tell myself, back in the day, was that a cubic inch of fat weighed less than a cubic inch of muscle - if I was gaining muscle mass then it was probably true that I was also losing fat mass (gain a cubic inch of muscle, lose a cubic inch of fat - it still equals a net gain in weight, but it’s a good gain). Made me stronger and better able to do the things I needed/wanted to do, and sorta kinda shut up the voices telling me that weight gain of any kind was bad.
Sorry if this is a derail, but your post made me thing about just how incredibly varied bodies can be.
One of the things that’s interesting to me is that a two-pound change in weight stuck out to you as something noteworthy.
My weight often bounces around two or three pounds from day to day. I’ll have weeks when I’m a few pounds heavier than my usual weight, or a few pounds below it, and then my body bounces back.
So, a two-pound change wouldn’t register with me as something I should pay attention to-unless it was followed by another two-pound change in the same direction, and then another, and another.
On the other hand, I know women who talk about gaining or losing five pounds in a week, which has always blown my mind. With my physiology, that kind of rapid change simply does not happen.
This phenomenon, more than pretty much anything else, helped convince me that our bodies have very different approaches to finding, and maintaining, a happy weight. Some of us are homeostasis machines; some of us bounce around wildly. I know lifestyle and environment play a part in this, but it seems to me that there’s something biological going on here.
One more reason why we shouldn’t expect everyone’s body to fit into the same mold, or react to diet, exercise, or whatever the same way.
I once had a prom dress that wouldn’t fit after I started lifting heavy weights because I’d gained such muscle mass.
Besides the obvious jokes about what a HE- MAN I was everyone was sitting there scratching their heads while trying to sandwich me into this little red number that had fit just two months before.
No one believed me that you could go up in size due to being totally healthy and exercising.
I got a LOT of eye rolling and whispers about how I needed to lay off the Ding Dongs.
NCP, you are in super shape so don’t let the alarm bells ring too loud. I wish I had your stamina, get up and go and gusto to try new things!
Congrats on becoming stronger: *Clapping*
“the important thing is the improvement in health and fitness and how you feel… not what the scale says.”—I cosign 10000%. I need to change my workout, so I can strengthen my body and work on my flexibility (dang, I miss those days of dance class). Anyway, I am happy you wrote this piece because people do struggle with “weight gain is bad” mentality; as a result, they don’t necessarily become healthier.