This may come as a surprise but Garage1880 has no strong feelings associated with weight gain or loss.
What Garage1880 does have strong feelings towards is if trying to change and track your weight makes you feel like shit.
Weight is just data that can be collected to tell a part of a story. Data means different things in different situations.
I’ll give you an example that might help this make sense:
“The city got 23 inches of rain last year.”
What does that mean?
Well, absolutely nothing when we don’t know what city you’re talking about.
Ok, say we’re talking about Denver. That’s a lot of rain, six more inches than an average year. If we’re talking about Seattle? Well, I’m concerned. 23 Inches in Seattle for the entire year probably means the city is experiencing its worst drought on record. This data means something completely different and rain alone even within the context of a city doesn’t tell us the entire story. Say Denver got this exceptional amount of rain, but the city also experienced record-breaking heat. We would probably still need to be worried about water levels, fire season, etc. Rain is just one data point in a much larger story when it comes to climate.
Now you might be thinking: Allie, why are you spending so much time talking about weather, I thought this was a personal training studio? Well, while it’s really easy for people to acknowledge rain means nothing without context. When it comes to weight, we tend to attach emotions rather than think of weight as data. It can be hard to accept that weight change means nothing.
I’ll give you some made-up examples:
Paul lost 5lbs.
Your first thought might be “Wow, that’s great Paul”.
What if I told you Paul actually was underweight from an illness and had been trying to gain weight? Suddenly, we’re worried that Paul has lost 5lbs, not celebrating.
What if I told you Paul was hoping to lose a few pounds but he lost 5lbs by skipping out on social outings, feeling anxious when he did go to events, eating food he doesn’t enjoy, and going to the gym excessively to the point of injury.
Again, suddenly we have things that seem much more important to address than Paul’s weight.
What if I told you Paul was hoping to lose a few pounds. It took about 5 months to lose 5lbs but he’s been enjoying his food, feels confident eating out with friends, has maintained a workout schedule that he likes, his hip mobility has improved, and he is experiencing less back pain. I suppose we could celebrate Paul losing 5lbs but I would much rather celebrate that Paul is developing a healthy relationship with food and exercise.
Weight change has no clear meaning which is why at Garage1880 we focus on how our nutrition and exercise recommendations make you feel, not what they do to the scale.