Fitness Blogger Urges Women To #ScrewTheScales And Stop Obsessing Over Their Weight
A fitness blogger is encouraging women to ditch the scales [Photo: Instagram/mysweatlife]
It’s amazing how many of us live and die by the magic number that flashes up on the bathroom scales. You might have been working out like a demon, have ditched junk in favour of eating clean, but if the figures on the scale remain stubbornly fixed, or even, HORROR, go up, well, deflated just isn’t the word.
But weighing scales don’t always tell the whole story. Which is why fitness blogger Kelsey Wells, is urging her 300K followers to stop being a slave to the scales and letting weight define how they feel about their bodies.
Taking to her Instagram, the 26-year-old who runs fitness blog My Sweat Life penned an empowering post explaining that weight isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of health. Sharing three side-by-side selfies, one two months after giving birth (145 lbs) then when she reached her ‘goal weight’ (122 lbs) a few months later, and how she looks today after putting 18 lbs back on (140 lbs).
“There is only a 5lb difference between my starting and current weight, but my body composition has changed COMPLETELY,” Kelsey wrote. “I have never had more muscle and less body fat than I do now. I have never been healthier than I am now.”
Kelsey says she feels better than ever since stopping weighing herself [Photo: Instagram/mysweatlife]
Kelsey said if she was measuring her progress by just weight alone, she would have failed miserably, but she takes a number of other factors into consideration such as strength, ability, endurance and of course happiness.
Explaining that she used to allow her weight it to totally affect her self-esteem, Kelsey told her followers that after putting on more weight than she expected during her pregnancy, she was desperate to get back to her ‘goal weight’.
“I weighed 130lbs before getting pregnant, so based on nothing besides my own warped perception, I decided my ‘goal weight’ should be 122lbs,” she wrote.
And, five months post-partum and two months into her Bikini Body Guide (BBG) workout programme, she reached her target. But, as she followed the regime, she started to build muscle and gain strength. Now she weighs 18lbs over her goal weight and has gone up two dress sizes.
“According to my old self and flawed standards, I would be failing miserably. THANK GOODNESS I finally learned to start measuring my progress by things that matter – strength, ability, endurance, health, and HAPPINESS,” she writes.
Instead of focussing on weight, Kelsey wants to encourage people to use other indicators of fitness and health.
“Take progress photos and videos,” she advises. “Record how many push-ups you can do, etc.”
Kelsey believes there are better indicators of health and fitness [Photo: Instagram/mysweatlife]
And Kelsey isn’t the only one to believe that scales, as a measure of health, are flawed. The personal trainer Joe Wicks, aka the Body Coach, doesn’t allow his clients to weigh themselves, referring to scales as “the sad step”.
Other experts argue scales don’t take into account muscle mass, shifts in body fat, water retention or even ageing. And then there’s the emotional affect weighing yourself can have on your self-esteem, with some fitness experts explaining that a negative scale reading can sometimes lead to abandoning of fitness goals completely.
Plus, as Kelsey points out, weighing less doesn’t necessarily = looking or feeling better.
#ScrewTheScales people, #ScrewTheScales.
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