011 The Uplift Podcast: How Tracking, Comparing, and Perfecting Are Keeping You Stuck with Coach Scarlett

We're kicking off Season 2 with something that sits at the root of so much of what holds women back and it's not laziness, lack of motivation, or discipline. It's the quiet, cumulative damage of measuring too much, comparing too often, and waiting for perfect conditions that never actually arrive.

In this solo episode, Scarlett breaks down the tracking trap why obsessively can erode your ability to trust yourself and how that naturally leads to comparison. With other women. With who you used to be. And how those comparisons stop being feelings and start becoming the story you tell yourself about what you're capable of.

If you've ever said I'll never lose the weight, I'll never be as strong as I was, what's the point of starting this episode is for you.

In This Episode

• Why tracking stops being a tool and starts being a way of overriding your own body signals
• How a measuring mindset makes comparison almost inevitable and why comparing to your past self is especially dangerous
• The moment comparison stops being a feeling and becomes a story and what that story costs you
• Why perfectionism isn't about high standards, it's about protection and how it keeps you in a permanent holding pattern
• What actually shifts when you stop waiting to be ready and just show up in the form you're in

If This Episode Resonated

Screenshot this episode and share it to your stories tag @theupliftpodcast1 so Scarlett can see it. And if you've been listening for a while, leaving a review makes a huge difference in helping more women find the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Let me ask you something. When did you last do something? A workout, a run, a meal, a rest day, and just feel good about it. Not because the numbers said you should, not because it hit a target, just because it felt good. If you had to think about that for a second, then this episode is for you. Welcome back to the Uplift Podcast. My name is Scarlett. And if you're new here, hello. I'm glad that you found this. And if you've been here a while, welcome back to season two. We are starting this season with something that I think is at the root of so much of what holds women back. And it's something I see every single week inside my coaching as well. Today we're talking about tracking, comparison, and perfectionism. Specifically, the way perfectionism disguises itself as productivity. So you never realize that it's a it's the thing that's stopping you. Um, this episode is about why measuring everything quietly destroys your relationship with the things you love doing, um, and how then that opens doors to comparing with other people, older versions of yourself, um, and how that fear of not hitting a certain standard can become so loud that you don't start, or you stop, or you stay in this exhausting holding pattern where you're planning to do the thing, but you never actually do it. Um, so let's get into it. I want to start by saying tracking isn't bad. I track things, I get my clients to track things. Data has a place, but there's a version of tracking that isn't about information anymore, it's about control, and there's a version of tracking that's become so embedded in how we approach our bodies, our food, our movement that we've completely lost the ability to just be in our own experience. Think about it. If you go for a walk, the walk felt lovely, it cleared your head, you go outside, but your app decided not to track, or the first five minutes didn't log, or you didn't charge your watch up or your ring, um, and it just didn't log it, and you get annoyed. Um, and this this episode was actually brought on by this happening to me after I did um a little jog um one morning and it didn't track, and I was just like, oh, I was so gutted, and then I thought I actually just really enjoyed that. Like, why does it have to be something that was like has to be tracked? Like it was good, like my body knew it was good, um, but it just wasn't there, and and it just it made me realize that we do sometimes overly track things and it can make us feel um certain types of ways. So, like that's the moment like tracking, stop serving you, you know, when the number becomes more of the truth and actually how you felt and your experience becomes secondary. And when that happens consistently, like over weeks, over years, like you actually stop trusting yourself. Um, you stop being able to answer simple questions like, Am I hungry? Am I tired? Did that actually feel good? You need an app to tell you, um, you need a metric to confirm it, and you outsourced your own body's literacy by a dashboard, right? So, like I see this all the time, and you know, women who've tracked calories for so long, um, you know, you can't eat a meal without doing the mental maths, women who don't take rest days unless the readiness score is low enough to justify it. Um, and women who just ran every single day for years because they felt they had to, and then if there's an injury or life or burnout, like they have absolutely no idea how to exist in their bodies without that structure. Um, so we've definitely created a generation of women who are incredibly disciplined and completely disconnected at the same time. Um, and I want like you to be clear with this that this it isn't failing in any way. Um it's the culture around women's health and fitness, like that's told us that's that's how we have to do it, right? Um, track everything, measure everything, optimise everything. Um, and if you're not collecting data, then you're not being serious. Um, but serious about what exactly? About enjoying your life, about feeling strong, about having a relationship with movement that lasts for 30, 40, 50 years. Um because I'm not sure obsessive tracking gets you there. So here's where things get a little bit more interesting because if you've trained yourself to evaluate your experience through those numbers, then that framework doesn't stay contained to just your own data, it spreads. So when you're used to measuring yourself against a target, a very short leap to measuring yourself against other people as well, or against a past version of yourself as well. That's like hit better numbers before. Um, you see someone's training post, and your brain does the maths automatically. She's lifted more, she's run faster, she's leaner. Um, her sprint times are better than mine. She does a bigger deadlift than me. Um, and we're at the same stage, like we know it happens. Um, or you look back at a photo from three years ago, or a training log from when you were really consistent or at your peak, um, and you start treating the past version of yourself as that benchmark um and the standards that you're failing to meet right now. And I definitely have done this, like coming from someone who was quite strong in powerlifting to now where like we're talking seven years ago, where I could rep 180 and now like 120, 130 is difficult. I'm like, shit, like in the comparison is there whether you think it or not. Um, so yeah, I think it's definitely underestimated, like comparing yourself with your past self can feel like self-awareness, like accountability, but a lot of the time it is just shame, like wearing a more sophisticated outfit. Um, you know, I used to be like this, I used to look like that, I used to train six days a week. Yeah, you used to be a different season of your life as well, like a different set of demands, possibly a different body composition, maybe different hormones, definitely different pressures. Um, but we don't factor that in and we decide that whoever we were back then is who we're supposed to be now. And comparison is a product of measuring, of a measure of mindset. Like when everything is a metric, everything becomes a competition, even with yourself. Um, and what that does is it removes you from the present, like you're never in the workout you're actually doing, you're in the workout you used to do, or the ones that she's doing, or the ones you planned to do before, you had to modify it, like you're everywhere else apart from the present moment, and it's exhausting, it's completely incompatible with progress. And because progress requires presence, you can't build something strength, fitness, a practice, a skill, while you're constantly living in comparison that tells you that you have that what you haven't do right now is enough. Um, so this is where we land on the thing that I really want to talk about today. Um, and that is perfectionism. Um, perfectionism as paralysis, basically. Um, because what happens when you're stuck in the measuring and the comparing is everything somehow falls a little bit short. And that's the very clever part of your brain that steps in with a solution, right? Don't do it until you can do it properly. And it sounds so reasonable, it sounds like high standard, it sounds like self-respect. But what it actually is, is it's a way of never actually being able to feel discomfort of imperfect action. Like perfectionism, perfectionism isn't about quality, it is about protection, right? So it protects you from trying and falling short, it protects you from being seen to do something badly, from starting over at a lower level than you once were, um, from doing modified versions, from you know, being able to lift, like I say, 180 deadlift to 100, like from the sessions where everything felt hard and heavy, and you can't remember what it used to feel like. Like perfectionism says if I can't do it the way it's supposed to be done, I won't do it all. And so the weeks become months and the months become years, and the things that you love to do or wanted to love to do, just sit there at arm's length waiting for the conditions to be right. But the conditions are never going to be right, and the perfect version of yourself who doesn't need to be rebuilt, um, you know, she doesn't exist. She never did. So I want to say something that I mean completely genuinely. I spent years waiting to be to be ready, like waiting until my lifts were back where they were, waiting to feel confident enough to show up consistently, you know, waiting until I had more time, more energy, motivation. Um, you know, when you're in that like proper peak of it. Um and then I just decided that just go for it, like be shit at things, like have fun, get stuck in, and and you know what once was might not be the same again, but we're not gonna dwell on that. We're gonna just meet yourself where you're at and and crack on. Um because the women I watch make the most meaningful, lasting change, and not the ones with the best conditions, like they're the ones who show up anyway. They did the the the hard jump sessions, they did the the runs, the conditions, they did the new exercise regime, um, you know, they logged an imperfect week and came back the following Monday. Um, you know, they stopped waiting to deserve the process um and just got into it. And like I take a lot from that, and I always say like success leaves clues. And if you look at the people who get stuck in and do the messy and you know, just enjoy the imperfect, they're the ones that actually thrive and continuously show up. And I just think that's really inspiring to be able to see and to be able to get stuck into, like, and something really shifts when you do that. Like, when you stop treating the imperfect version as something to be embarrassed about and start treating it as the only version that's actually available to you right now, the resistance loosens, like it stops feeling loaded. You know, the walk without the data, the tracking, um, the sessions that went a little bit sideways, the messy, inconsistent, you know, doing my best attempt counts. Um, and it counts every single time. Um, so here's what I want to leave you with today. Um, obviously, tracking is a tool. Use it that way. Um, but the moment it starts overriding your own felt experience, the moment you trust the number over yourself, it's worth questioning whose voice is actually running the show. Comparison is the natural endpoint of measuring mindset, right? When you build your entire identity around hitting targets, you'll always find someone or something to measure against, and you will nearly always find a way to come up short. That's not information, that's a trap. And perfectionism is one of the sneakiest, it will dress up as standards and call itself motivation. It will keep you from starting, from continuing, from showing up in the form that you're actually in right now. That's not motivation, that is fear. So we're allowed to begin again. You're allowed to begin in a smaller, less impressive version of yourself, messier version of yourself. In fact, that's the only way any of this actually works. Um so if any of this in this episode landed for you, I genuinely would love to hear it. So come and find me over on my Instagram, which is scarlet.pawch, or my Uplift Podcast Instagram, which is the Uplift Podcast one. Um, and if you're ready to stop waiting and actually want support doing the thing, then drop me a message, have a chat, um, and we'll see what sort of coaching and all of that good stuff looks like. Um but this is just a nice introduction into the season two, where over the next six episodes we have got some fantastic, fantastic guests um lined up, ready to inspire, motivate, educate in all of the good stuff when it comes to females just being in their bad bitch energy again. Um, so yeah, I will see you next week. Um, thank you so much for tuning in and listening. And please, if you do listen to the show, share it, send it to your friend, put it on your story, let us know what you think. Um, because yeah, I love to hear it. And I will see you all again next week.