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The Rejuvenating Health Podcast
Join Women's Health Nurse Practitioner, Lindsey VanSchoyck for a weekly dose of Precision Medicine as she addresses the hot-button topics specific to Women's Health, Fitness and Nutrition, interviews expert guests and hosts round table discussions with the team of dedicated functional health care specialists.
The Rejuvenating Health Podcast
E130 | Breaking Up With The Scale
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Ever let a single number decide your mood, meals, or motivation? Today, Lindsey and Laken go straight at the scale’s grip - how a “neutral” metric becomes a moral verdict and show how that judgment loop derails consistency, spikes stress hormones, and clouds real progress. This is a story about reclaiming agency with better feedback, not abandoning data.
We dig into the physiology behind daily weight swings: glycogen and water, luteal-phase fluid shifts, cortisol and salt, soreness and healing, travel and digestion, creatine and new meds, perimenopause and redistribution. The takeaway is simple and freeing: most day-to-day changes are noise, not fat. Once you see the noise, you can stop chasing it—and put your effort where it compounds.
Then we rebuild your dashboard. Progress photos and tape measurements that reveal recomposition. Strength PRs and cardio performance that mirror engine upgrades. Energy curves, cravings, hunger signals, bowel regularity, sleep depth, mood resilience, and cycle quality that reflect nervous system health. We also walk through lab markers twice a year—fasting insulin, A1C, triglyceride-to-HDL ratio, HS-CRP, ferritin, thyroid panel, ALT/AST, vitamin D and B12—to validate the internal changes long before the mirror catches up.
You’ll get a four-week no-scale reset with clear anchors: protein and fiber targets, steps, lifting sessions, sleep, hydration, carb timing, luteal-phase support, and stress downshifts. Finally, if you reintroduce the scale, we set guardrails: weigh for trends, add context, pair with measurements, and remove it again if one readout changes your mood or meals. Your worth isn’t a number; your habits and trends tell the truth.
If this resonates, follow the protocol, share your non-scale wins, and pass this episode to someone who needs relief from the morning weigh-in spiral. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: which metric will you track first?
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Welcome, Disclaimer, Setup
SPEAKER_00Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on the Rejuvenating Health podcast are solely those of the speakers and are intended as such. Please consult your trusted healthcare practitioner for medical advice. Let's go, girls. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm a loady nurse practitioner. I'm quite a nerd and lover of fitness, and I'm here today with Coach Lakin.
Why the Scale Becomes the Boss
SPEAKER_01Yes, Coach Lakin in the house. We got uh a good topic today, and it's gonna incorporate a little bit of science, a little bit of um psychology, as usual. And I am going to be asking a lot of good questions as well. So today we are talking about the probably the most toxic relationship that any woman ever has in her life, and that is uh the relationship with the scale and breaking up with the scale and why your relationship with that number is most likely holding you back in more ways than you know, and how to build a healthier feedback loop with it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So um, if you are a woman who has ever let your morning weigh in decide your mood, your meals for the day, and whether or not you show up for yourself, this one's for you. So it's literally for every woman out there because I'm not sure that there is a woman that this doesn't pertain to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, at some point in their life for sure. So let's talk about why this number um gains so much relevance, right? Like why does the scale become the boss? And it starts with psychology. Essentially, that number feels objective. So our brain allows it to have some power, right? It becomes a shortcut for our value. And this is learned behavior. And it usually is tied to something that's happened along the way that informs my brain that a certain number on the scale means something about me, right? I'm attached to the meaning that I'm making out of it. And it inherently it means either am I good or am I bad or am I failing? Right. It's like one of two things. And if the number is where we want it to be or lower, then we decide, oh, I'm good today. And if the number's not, then we decide that it means something bad about us. And that's the error that we need to reprogram.
The Chemistry of Dopamine and Cortisol
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I mean, I think it is a super easy thing to measure, right? It's one of the easiest things you can measure. You step on a scale and it gives you a number, but it's not a complete or accurate, probably, description of what is going on, right? So weight is a huge lagging indicator. Uh your sleep, your sodium, where you're at in your menstrual cycle, your inflammatory, your inflammation, if you had a hard workout, can literally swing that weight two to six pounds in 24 to 72 hours. And you can bet your butt you didn't gain six pounds of fat in 24 hours. Because do you even know how many calories that would be? Like yeah, yikes. And you also didn't lose six pounds in 24 hours. Like, let's be real there as well. You lost water or you gained water.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And when the number, you know, misbehaves, we want to slip into cognitive distortions, right? So it's that's where the all or nothing thinking comes in. We catastrophize, like, oh my gosh, like it must have been, you know, the the thing that I ate yesterday, right? Versus, no, that's not really possible, like Lindsay just said. A confirmation bias comes in place, right? So if we ever step on the scale and we think, C, that thing that I did was the cause of this, or C, I'm putting in all this work and nothing ever works for me, right? That's giving us that confirmation bias of one way or the other. Because we're already looking for a reason why the uncomfortable changes that we are making are not working. And so we're allowing it to take a hold of the story that we're telling ourselves about what that number means.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I mean, we see this, our coaches see it in client check-ins every week. I see it when I talk to clients when I do lab reviews. Like you're doing a lot of right things, right? Like, and you're having these other good indicators that things are going right. Your protein's up, your strength is up, your steps are up, but you're letting that scale mask your progress. And then you start to have shame and you start triggling into the you start spiraling into that. Well, what's the point? Spiral, this isn't gonna work for me. I'm putting in all this work and see it, it's not working.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's where that shortcut happens, right? Where it's like, oh, the quickest and easiest route is to say I'm doing something good or I'm failing at the thing that I'm trying to do. And it's not that simple.
Self-Defeating Physiology and Mindset Traps
SPEAKER_00No, and it's a huge trap because our our brains want certainty, right? Like you want to know this is working, this like you want certainty. And that number, if it, if it hits, right, if it if it shows up where we want it to be, it gives you a dopamine hit. And when it drops and it gives you a cortisol surge when it rises, right? So when the number comes down, you get this huge dopamine spike, like, yes, I did something good. When it goes up, your cortisol spikes because you're like, oh my God, this isn't working, right? And that chemical swing wires us to chase validation from the scale instead of maybe asking curiosity about other markers that we could be looking at or other behaviors.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like the leading metrics, right? So like this is the classic feedback loop hijack. So when the number rules are mood, our prefrontal cortex, right? That's the part that plans and sticks to our long-term goals and is rational, literally goes offline. So you start making more reactive, emotionally driven decisions, like, oh, that means I have to skip a meal, or I'm gonna train my way out of this number, right? Or I'm gonna, or I'm just gonna throw my hands up and say it's not worth it and I'm gonna quit.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01But those are not rational thought patterns.
SPEAKER_00No, and your body interprets that as stress, not motivation, right? So your cortisol is gonna climb, water retention is gonna follow, and ironically, that number that you are obsessing over is gonna rebound. And it's literally self-defeating physiology. Like you're literally making it worse on yourself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it becomes that like self-suf self-fulfilling prophecy, right? It's like you're what and again, we've talked about this before in many different ways. It's the same thing of what I put my focus on, that is what is going to get amplified, right? And so if I'm deciding that that number isn't what I want and that means something bad about me, I'm going to amplify that story that means that I'm not doing it right, or I'm doing something wrong, or it just doesn't work for me. There's something wrong with me. So before we talk about tools and specifics, we have to name the pattern, right? So, like when weight defines progress, progress stops being physiological, right? It becomes moral. Again, we're attaching meaning to it, and that's not true. And that's what destroys the sustainability of it. Because if that number on the scale, if I put on a number on a scale, get on the scale and I see a number and it says, Oh, I'm either good or I'm bad, right? That's not something that I can work with. I'm choosing to look at um a meaning making instead of the effort that will go into making the change that I want to see.
Crash Course: Why Weight Fluctuates
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So let's do a little crash course on why you have weight fluctuations and why you might not be seeing the number on the scale that you want to see. So here's kind of a quick crash course. So glycogen and water. Every gram of stored carbohydrate binds to three to four grams of water. So you have a really hard strength day at the gym, and maybe you ate a little bit higher carbs to fuel that strength dray, you're gonna weigh more tomorrow and be healthier for it, but you have more water because every carb is bound to three to four grams of water, right? Your menstrual cycle. Estrogen and progesterone shift and they raise a aldosterone and vasopressin. Aldosterone is a huge water, you it it it literally like controls your water balance, right? And that's why like certain blood pressure meds have aldosterone inhibitors in it and stuff like that. So what it means is fluid retention, especially when you're getting ready to start your menstrual cycle, when you have some when your hormones are wonky, like you like literally can gain up to three to four pounds, and that can be completely normal. A three to seven uptick is completely normal in weight, right?
SPEAKER_01Sodium and just like that late luteal phase, like right before you start your period where everybody feels like bloated and you know, like they're holding a bunch of water weight, they feel puffy. That's what's happening. And in all honesty, like perimenopausal symptoms are essentially an elongated luteal phase. Like it's mimicking the luteal phase of your hormonal cycle. So that's why those that comes up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Cortisol, when your cortisol is high, you crave salt. Um, and that salty meal plus high stress, you're gonna hold water. I mean, how many times have you eaten like, I don't know, what, Chinese food that has all that sodium and MSG in it, and you wake up and you're like, oh my god, I can't, my fingers look like sausage balls.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Inflammation and healing, right? So you started a new training program. You're gonna have sore muscles, you're gonna have water retention. I pulled my hamstring, I have water retention right now. Like it that injury is pulling fluid into my tissues to heal. It's not surprising that I'm up a couple pounds, not that I really weigh myself, but because I have fluid retention, because my tissue needs stuff to heal, right? If you haven't pooped, like I know all you like most of you women aren't pooping every day. Like if you're not pooping, fiber, your fiber intake, if you if you've changed how much fiber you're eating, if you've traveled and you've been on an airplane and you know you get off and you're a little bit dehydrated, so you're constipated and you don't poop the whole time you're on vacation, or you're one of those people that can't poop when you go to someone else's house if you're on antibiotics, like literally all of that can affect your weight, right? Creatine, which I think every woman should be on, it's gonna increase intracellular water in your muscles. It's really great for strength and it's really noisy for the scale, but it's gonna balance out, right? You start a new med, an SSRI, a beta blocker, you're on steroids, you're on an antihistamine, like all of those things can cause fluid shifts. You're going through perimenopause and menopause. That estrogen alters your body fat distribution and insulin sensitivity, which I feel like we've talked about that a million and one times, but weight regulation becomes more about muscle and protein and fiber and sweet sleep quality at that time.
Non-Scale Metrics That Matter
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And all these things that you just listed, I mean, half of them are outside of your control, and half of them are things that we want to be doing, right? Strength training, using supplementing creatine, making sure that we're, you know, we're regular, uh, adhering to our glycogen stores. So, and making sure that we're healing when we're inflamed. So these are things that it's not uh we want to think that there's a bad association with water retention. That's not always the case, right? Sometimes it is necessary, and it is just a part of, it's just a part of being a woman, honestly. Yeah. So it has to be yeah, a human. And it has to be so there has to be some radical acceptance around that, right? Like this is a part of it, and I have to allow myself grace if I'm weighing myself, that's going to be a part of the package that comes through. And it's not, it's I'm not purely looking at a fat loss or increase, right? So if the same behaviors that build health nudge the scale up short term, right? But down long term, the number can confuse a lot of people that are doing the right things. Because if I'm doing all these things, but the number goes up in response, I'm gonna have a fear response associated with that because again, I'm attached to that story that says that the number means something bad about me, versus can I lean into what's going on? Can I take a more curious approach of like, okay, these are all the things that could be contributing to that? And there are lots of other ways to think about what uh how my body's changing to get the outcome that I want.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Like, and and this is why you need leading indicators, so behaviors and early signals that can predict results. So grab a notebook. We're gonna talk about things that you should be tracking instead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So these are like the non-scale metrics that we try to get clients to focus on throughout the program that we shift the focus to, and that are really the things that are going to tell you if your body's moving in the direction that you want. So, one big one is progress photos. Ladies, all the time, really resist this. They don't want to take photos because I get it. If you're not happy with the way that you look right now, again, because you're looking to make a change, you may not feel comfortable taking photos of yourself. But I can promise you that you will wish that you had because it is a great way to see overall progress that isn't gonna necessarily show in that number on the scale, right? And we see ourselves every day. So just looking at our reflection is not gonna be the same as being able to look at a monthly photo that's showcasing what our body is doing over time. Now, ideally for these, you want to have similar lighting, same pose. If you can do the same outfit, even better, and most importantly, a similar phase in your cycle because again, water retention is going to fluctuate through things like that. So take those things into consideration. But solid progress photos can speak again, a picture's worth a thousand words, right? It will literally speak volumes. So that's a big one.
SPEAKER_00You don't even have to look at it. Like to have your significant other take it and just throw it away, like push it, like store it in their phone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Or just if you have a coach, just send it to your coach and then they will take care of it. You don't have to look at it. It doesn't have to be something that you obsess over. It's just a resource to have, right? For comparison over time.
SPEAKER_00I can tell you what, you're gonna want it because when you have those results that you want, you're gonna want to look back and be like, hey, look at me. I did this.
Lab Markers for Metabolic Health
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Every single woman that we've ever coached that has refused to take progress photos, when she gets to the outcome that she wants, she wishes, she regrets it. Every single one has regretted not taking starter photos, right? So that they can see the progress over time. Another big one is measurements. And this is another one that a lot of women resist, right? But even just a waist measurement, right? Or just the areas that you are most concerned about, measure them, measure them at least every four weeks, right? Because we need to make sure that we're tracking something. Your body composition may be changing and the scale could not be moving at all, right? But that allows you to get some insight into how your body is adjusting with the changes that you're making. Strength markers, what does it look like in the gym? Are you measuring your progress with the weight that you're moving if you're doing your resistance training, which you should be? Performance. This goes hand in hand, but this is more on the cardiovascular side, right? So, like, what does your energy level look like when you're doing any type of cardio? What does your HRV look like if you track that, right? Like, what are things that you couldn't do before that you can do now, metabolically speaking? That energy curve. So if you used to have that huge dip in energy in the middle of the afternoon after you eat lunch, has that improved? And we're not talking about did it go away, right? Has it improved? Are you noticing that you have a little bit more energy? Is it take longer for you to hit the energy slump, right? Notice those things and celebrate them. Cravings and hunger signals. This is huge because so many women come to us and they say, I'm just not hungry, right? If you're healthy, you're hungry. And so paying attention all the time. Yeah, paying attention to is my hunger coming back? And are my cravings lessening? Because hunger and cravings are different. We've talked about that before on a separate podcast. So if you need more information, go back to that one. Bowel regularity. Lindsay already mentioned this, right? But you should be regular. You should be having a bowel movement at least once a day. And so if that's improving, that's a huge marker of health to not throw in the toilet for pun intended, right? Sleep, making sure that we are getting quality sleep and has that improved? Have you had an easier time falling asleep? Are you staying asleep longer through the night? Are you waking up feeling more rested? Those are all things to take into consideration. Your cycle quality. If you are still having a monthly cycle, what does your PMS look like? Are you having severe symptoms? Have they improved? How long is your bleed? Are you having cramps? If you don't have PCOS or endometriosis or an underlying issue, those are things that are common and not normal. So we can have a pretty symptom-free cycle monthly if we are doing all the right things. I like to consider my period as my monthly report card, right? So how I feel when I'm about to get my bleed tells me a lot about the habits that I've been taking care of or have not by all of those stuff things.
SPEAKER_00It is a sign.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Your scare skin, hair, and nails, right? Like, are they healthy? Do you feel like your hair's falling out when you started? And if has that improved over time, you had less shedding. Are your nails growing faster? Are they stronger? Those things also are really good signs that you're making healthy improvements. Your mood and your resilience, this one is huge, right? If you were so easily frazzled before and that you were on the edge and constantly overwhelmed, and now you're bouncing back better from things, you're taking things with a beat, you are able to breathe through some high stress moments, you're less reactive, right? Those are all things to take into consideration. And most of the time this comes through as oh, my kids said that I'm a lot more patient with them. Or my husband said that I'm a lot nicer now, or I'm in a better mood recently. You may not notice it, other people around you will, and then you have to recognize it and celebrate it. How your clothes fit, right? If you're not gonna do measurements and you're not gonna do progress photos, at least you're make sure that you're paying attention, right?
SPEAKER_00So, like that means like put on a pair of jeans, like you don't want to live in yoga pants sometimes, like that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, yeah. Like how make make sure that you're paying attention to like uh everybody has that outfit, right? That they like they love, but it's not always the most comfortable thing. How does that outfit fit? How do you feel in it? And is that improving over time? Your steps, is that improving? Was there a time where it was really a big struggle to hit 5,000 steps a day and now you're crushing seven a day, right? That's a huge improvement. And your protein and fiber, we're gonna talk about, we're gonna get into more detail about that as far as specific targets, but has that improved? And that's gonna directly correlate to a lot of other things, such as your sleep, your bowel movements, right? How you're feeling, your energy levels throughout the day. And so these are all things that, again, we don't take notice of because we put so much more value on that number on the scale, but these are things that are actually going to contribute to that number on the scale, right? And they're actually gonna make those changes and they're worth acknowledging and celebrating along the way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you can also find a lot in your labs, right? And so I would suggest doing your labs probably twice a year and and looking at it at some of these markers, right? So your fasting insulin, has it gone down, right? Ideally, you want it to be in that three to six range, context dependent, but has your fasting insulin gone down? Has your A1C, so your hemoglobin A1C, a hemoglobin molecule lives for three months. If you want a really good picture of what's going on in your body over the last three months, like get a hemoglobin A1C. It's literally telling you how much sugar is attached to your red blood cells over the course of three months. And you really want it under 5.3. I know under 5.7 is normal, but we're looking for optimal. Right, we're looking for healthy. Your triglycerides, um, you want those under 70 and you want your HDL, you want them to be like one to one or even less than one. So your triglyceride to HDL ratio should be a one or below. You don't want those triglycerides to be 150 and your HDL to be 30. You are not metabolically healthy that way. So is that gap coming closer together?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and for labs that don't show that, Lindsay, because some of them don't provide the ratio, they'll just provide the individual numbers.
SPEAKER_00So anybody would be able to take a calculate it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, their triglycerides divided by their HDL count, right? And that will give you that ratio.
The Four-Week No-Scale Protocol
SPEAKER_00Yeah, easy. Um, your HSCRP, like, is your inflammation trending down, right? Like we have some women who come in and their HSCRP is like 20 and we get it down to, you know, whatever. Is your ferritin improving? Which that's like super important for your hair. If it's really high, it can mean that you're inflamed. If it's really low, I I guarantee you have no energy and your hair's falling out, right? Like, what's your thyroid doing, right? Like, what's your TSH, free T3, free T4 doing? If they're if your free T3 is improving, then you're making progress, right? What are your liver enzymes doing? So your ALT and AST, ideally you want those under 20. If they're over 20, you could be having a little bit of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which means that you're literally storing visceral fat around your organs, which is awful. It's awful for you. What are your nutrients doing? So, like your B12, your vitamin D, those are really important for energy and mood. Are they improving? Like, are you getting insufficient nutrients? All of these things are super easy to check. They're not very expensive, and they can give you a really good picture that your body is getting healthier. And literally, what do I say? A healthy body on the inside is healthy on the outside. So if these markers are shit, you are not going to be the weight that you want to be at. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they also allow you to lean into curiosity, right? Because these are not things that we can see regularly. We have to get blood panels for. And so if we can lean into curiosity of making sure that we're getting all the data that contributes to the outcome that we want, then that is what can fuel consistency over time because those are things, again, that are uh more controllable with our lifestyle habits.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So if you step on the scale in the morning and it runs your day, I'm gonna challenge you to do a four-week no-scale protocol. And we're going to talk about what that looks like here. We're gonna do a little reset for you. And you're not gonna get on that scale for four weeks. And oh my god, you're gonna live. I promise.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but just put it somewhere, just hide it somewhere from yourself.
SPEAKER_00I've literally took the scale from one of my clients before and put it in my car for a month. So she couldn't get on it. It doesn't mean she didn't go buy another one, but you know, you know, you know. Week one, we're gonna deprogram and and stabilize, right? So we're gonna do some behavior anchors. We're gonna eat 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. We're gonna eat I don't know 25 to 35 grams of fiber from veggies, berries, legumes, cheese seed, flax. Caveat here, if you're eating no fiber, I I don't know that you should go up to 35 grams because your stomach might hit you a little bit. But let's just try to increase your fruit and veggies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I just say a serving of fruit or veggies with every meal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Let's increase our steps to eight to ten thousand steps a day. Let's do two to three full body strength sessions a week. Let's consistently be a bed asleep for seven hours, right? And you know, like what's a mindset practice you can do to help with that?
SPEAKER_01I would say if you are not going to remove your scale completely, which is what I would recommend, because the more uh deterrence that you can put in place is gonna make that easier by just remove it from the environment would be the best. And if you're not willing to do that, write a love note on your scale to yourself, right? That just says, well, we're not gonna go here today. That's okay. We're gonna replace this with a check-in instead. And that check-in can be, how's my energy? Right? What are my cravings like today? Um, how's my mood? Do I feel sore? Right? Like whatever resonates with you as far as like what is the thing that actually makes me feel better, because that's what you're seeking when you're jumping on that scale. So instead, write the little note to yourself that asks you the question that resonates with you the most of what you are looking for to feel. Am I feeling X today? Right. And then you just answer it instead of jumping on the scale when you wake up.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So, week two, we're gonna build capacity on top of that. So if you're weightlifting, like add another set or a little bit more weight to your lifts, right? Let's increase our water to 80 to 100 ounces, put a little bit of electrolytes in it around your training sessions, wake, eat breakfast within 30 to 60 minutes of waking up to stabilize your blood sugar. Do some reflection.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01What did I learn today about myself? What am I grateful for that I was able to do today with my body? What way did my body show up for me today?
Reintroducing the Scale with Boundaries
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Week three, like personalize it a little bit. Like maybe you start playing around with carb timing, right? Most of your carbs should be after your workouts, maybe in the evening for sleep, right? So you don't have a blood glucose drop. Plan for your periods, right? So have a PMS plan, increase your magnesium, prioritize salt and potassium. Maybe allow for an extra one to 200 calories if your cravings spike because you do require more calories in that luteal phase. But don't make them an ice cream sandwich, like make them protein and fiber, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And then in week three, start to think about how you're managing your stress currently, right? Like, can I take a beat? Can I pause and breathe when I'm feeling stress? Can I make sure that my exhales are longer than my inhales when I'm feeling upregulated or when I feel that tension coming into my body? Can I create awareness around what that tension actually feels like and identify what that means to me? You could be a jaw clencher, you could be someone that lives with their shoulders in their ears, you could be somebody that clenches their fists or puckers their butt, right? Like you got to figure out what are your warning signs that you don't wait until you don't have another option before you, you know, get out of control and aren't able to manage it. It feels overwhelming.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And then week four, we're just gonna look at your future you, right? So maybe this week you're feeling better and you actually will take those progress photos or do those measurements, right? Do an audit. Like what habits over the past three weeks felt easy for you? Like what's sticking? What maybe do you need to prioritize, right? And then really make that decision and reintroduce some boundaries around the scale. Like, do I need to stay off the scale because I don't have a healthy relationship? Do I need to make it to where I only do this once a week? Do I need to like setting some boundaries and in place around that so that you can have a healthy relationship with it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and don't chase perfection, ladies. You have to chase what's repeatable. Right. So using a system that works for you to track these habits, meaning if the starting metrics that Lindsay mentioned in week one are something that's way off the rails for compared to what you're doing right now, start with one of them that makes the most sense with you, or start with a smaller version of it that you can adhere to. And then you're shooting for 70, 80% consistency week over week, right? So that's plenty of room to see changes if you give yourself the wiggle room and don't say, well, it has to look like this or it's not worth doing at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So if we are gonna reintroduce the scale, what set some safety rules in place, right? Because some of you like data and you're okay. You're not emotionally hooked to it. So if we're gonna reintroduce the scale, like I like make this your purpose statement. I way to collaborate trends, not to judge my worth. Because if you're gonna use a scale, it is all about trends, right? I like you cannot look at one day and time, like I literally had someone today send me their CGM, and I'm like, I don't care what your CGM is doing today. What are the trends doing? Right? Like, I don't care what your weight is today, what are the trends doing, right?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So meaning what does it look like over the last three months? What direction is it going in?
SPEAKER_00Like what are you weighing yourself at the same time in the same circumstances, right? So maybe you weigh yourself in once per week, or you're if you're gonna do it daily, you do a seven-day average. Like no single day counts on the scale.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
Control, Quick Fixes, and Sustainable Change
SPEAKER_00And you have to put context to it, right? Like if you're gonna weigh yourself, like where are you at in your cycle? How's your soreness of your body? Did you travel? Did you poop today? And maybe pair it with a tape measure, right? Like measure your hips, right? Like, here's the red flag though. If you get on that scale just once and it changes the way that you're eating for the day or your mood, then you need to pause and get rid of the scale again for a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not serving you. And if you're in perimenopause, expect a wider weekly swing, right? That doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with you. It just means that your hormones are Shifting and you're gonna you're gonna be prone to more water retention, you're gonna be prone to bigger swings of weight fluctuation. And again, strength and protein and fiber are your best friends, they're gonna be your biggest assets.
SPEAKER_00So, Lincoln, if I don't weigh myself, I am gonna lose control.
SPEAKER_01What are you trying to control? Right? Like if your body is prioritizing what it needs and you're living, if you're truly doing the lifestyle habits that you know are gonna move you in the right direction, are those not a form of control?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Can you control your meals, your training times, your bedtime? Like you have more control over that than you do your weight.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Right?
SPEAKER_01Right. Control comes in the form of the repeatable things. Again, what is repeatable and what can you be consistent with? Those are the things to focus on.
SPEAKER_00But Lincoln, I've done a diet plan before and I've lost five pounds in a week. I need to see results fast, or I'm not gonna stick with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I totally hear that. We hear that all the time, right? But I will say that, and then Lindsay can back this up, right? If we see quick drops on the scale, it's because it's water and muscle.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01That is not what you want, right? You want fat loss that stays gone, and that is built on muscle protein sleep and a nervous system that isn't panicked all the time. So the lifestyle habits that we're putting in place will take longer to see that drop happen, but it is going to be the type of drop that is getting you in the direction that you want to go and towards the outcome that you want. Anytime you see a quick drop on the scale, it's because you're sacrificing muscle mass and because you have water retention that's happening, or you're losing weight.
What to Track Weekly Instead
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So here's what you should track. Track your waist circumference at your belly button. Okay. Track your hips at your widest point, track your steps per day. How many training sessions did you complete per week? How much did you lift at those training sessions? How much protein did you eat in a day? How much fiber did you eat in a day? How much sleep did you get? What's your energy on a scale of 10? What are your cravings on a scale of one to 10? That's the stuff that we have our clients track more than weight. And we use a really simple app and it's super easy to track it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And if not all of those things trend better, but a couple of them, like at least half of them for two weeks, stay the course, even if nothing happens, right? Because changing 10 variables just because the skill, the scale, you know, bounced or didn't, doesn't make sense. You have to do the things that are making sense. I always say the time is going by either way, right? So you might as well do the things that you know are going to eventually get you to where you want to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So if today hit home, you should probably commit to this little training protocol that we set out for you. And you can totally share how it went with us. But you should break up with your scale. It's not a healthy, it's the most abusive relationship that you could probably ever have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not serving you, it's not giving you anything that you need, I promise. And you I guarantee you, once you get to a place, just like a shitty boyfriend, once you get to a place where you're unbothered by it, it there's so much freedom on the other side.
SPEAKER_00So freedom. I mean, like, I used to live by the scale, and I don't ever weigh myself now. Like, I literally use all these markers. Like, I don't need to know how much I weigh it. Truthfully, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Awesome. Well, your worth isn't a number, your habits and your uh are proof. So hopefully, like, share, give us a five-star review, and we will see you next week.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, ladies. Have a good one.