Trust the Process

I have a confession to make.





I weigh myself every day.

Sometimes multiple times a day.

I know, it's horrible.  My trainer AND my nutritionist both tell me, in the nicest way possible, that I'm a freakin' idiot for doing this.  And yet I can't stop.

I have to do it.  I don't punish myself on "bad" days or reward myself on "good" days, I just have to know what the scale says!

I feel weird when I don't weigh myself.  It's obsessive and I know it's bad, but I do it.  Confession over.


Let's talk about why this may be the crappiest idea ever.

Last month, I went to my nutritionist's office for my body comp appt, like I always do.  She weighs and measures me, sticks the EKG patches to my hand and foot and then we chat about how things went and she answers my 10,000 inevitable questions.

Last month, I weighed in at 255, which for me is pretty damn good.  Friggin amazeballs good, actually.

The next day, and for about 2 weeks afterward, I consistently weighed in at 255.  Sometimes my body likes to hold on to weight for as long as humanly possible and then drop several pounds overnight, so I wasn't too concerned or annoyed at this point.

Then, things took what I thought was a horrible turn.  My weight started to creep upwards.  A few days later, it was 257.  Then 260.  261.  262.  Another week and a half later and I was holding steady at 266.

And I was PISSED.

I was (am) still working out as much as I have been for the past year, 5-6x weekly for an hour.  I had (have) been eating the same healthy, whole foods as I always have been.

Why in the holy hell had I gained 11 pounds in less than a month?  I could understand it if I had avoided the gym all month and taken to eating a steady diet of cupcakes and Cheetos.  In fact, I briefly considered eating cupcakes and Cheetos, because why not?  If I'm going to gain weight anyway, I might as well go down in flames...

About 4 days before my nutritionist appointment, my weight started to trend downwards.  It finally "landed" at 256, one pound above where I'd started the month (although my bathroom is an electromagnetic black hole...every scale that enters it becomes 2-5 lb heavy within 6 weeks, no lie).

I asked my nutritionist about my body's love of holding on to weight and then dumping several pounds instantaneously instead of gradually letting it go.  Apparently, normal.  I also asked her about my rapid weight gain this month and told her how pissed I was.  After telling me (again) to stop weighing myself every damn day, she told me this can be normal, too.  *le sigh*  I don't WANT to gain weight when I'm working my ass off!  Even if it's muscle and water (two things that I actually need to gain).

I hopped on the scale.

253.

Ok, not fantastic, but a loss.  I'll take it.

Then she did my body composition analysis.

And this, my friends, is why you should not weigh yourself every day.


Even though I "only" lost 2 lb on the scale, I lost 12 lb of fat.

I also gained muscle and several pounds of water.  I know a lot of people hear "water weight gain" and think of edema or bloating, but I'm chronically dehydrated despite drinking 3-5 Nalgenes of water a day, so for me, numerous pounds of water weight gain was excellent news.

The moral of the story?

I hate hokey crap.  "Trust the process."  "Find your zen." "Keep calm and carry on." "#blessed" "If you build it, they will come." 

Ugh.  Just give me the info and/or tell me what to do without the crispy new age coating, please.

But in this case, true.  Trust the process, indeed.  "The process" has been serving me well for over a year now, one perceived setback shouldn't derail me.

Especially because it turned out to be AWESOME and not a setback at all.

Things

Questions I have and things that will happen to you after you start working out (and by you, I mean me):

1) Why didn't anybody tell me that workouts are AMAZING for rage management?  I should probably preface this by saying I don't generally have rage issues, I'm not an extraordinarily angry person.  But there are a very select few people on earth that I hate with the fire of a thousand suns.  Slamming a (conveniently head-shaped but quite sizeable) medicine ball into the ground repeatedly as I silently curse their very names is so very therapeutic.

Attention assholes: This is your stupid head.  I will drop it like 4th period French.

Hint: it's this.  I fucking HATE this shit.  

2) Don't EVER tell your trainer which exercises you hate.  He will evilly use this information against or for you (depending on how you look at the situation).

3) You will secretly know that #2 is for your own good.  Dammit.

4) You will watch other people working out and think "holy shit, I can't do that!"  You will have to remind yourself that just one short week ago, you DREADED your first workout and thought it'd be awful...turns out, it was, but you look forward to your workouts now because it was also friggin fantastic.  Also, you need to remind yourself that you whipped through one of your workouts so much faster than your trainer expected that he had to wing it and come up with more shit for you to do on the spot (boom, bitches).  Then you will think "holy crap, my week was awesome.  I can do a lot of stuff."  Then you will rephrase... "holy shit, I can't wait to learn to do that."

5) When your trainer tells you that you should be excited when he introduces you to burpees, you will momentarily suspect that he has a serious crack habit, and then remember where you are and who you're talking to, and that suspicion will pass.  No disrespect, my friend, but excitement for burpees?  Player please.

6) Why in the holy hell did nobody share this secret with me: eating well is 1 billion times easier when you exercise regularly?  Going into it, the thought is "man, I have to focus on TWO life changes, not just one."  It seems pretty daunting.  The reality is; when you sweat your everloving ass off, you don't want to fuck it up and/or waste your time by going home and eating crap.  I'm actually kind of pissed about this one (not really...but also...yeah).

7) On a similar note, you will start to crave meat like a caveman.  Even though you are a vegetarian and haven't had meat in about 2 years, and the butchering/prep process grosses you out to no end...you will still want meat.  Dammit.

This will be you.

8) You will become a huge dork who blogs about working out.