402: “How Can I Improve My Relationship With The Scale?” | Live Coaching Session

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 402.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and this episode is for you if you have ever wanted to pick up your scale and just chuck it out the window. Have you ever been someone who feels like maybe you don't have a very good relationship with the scale? First of all, you are not alone. That is very, very common. It's one of the most common struggles that I hear from women as they're starting out in MACROS 101. They feel like the scale is their enemy. They feel like the scale dictates if they're going to have a good day or a bad day, and they don't want that. They don't want the scale to control their emotions or their mood. If that is your current experience, you step on the scale, you see a number that you don't like, and you feel disappointed. You feel frustration. You feel stuck. You feel like you don't even know what to do, and then that voice in your head has you questioning, am I even doing all the right things, and should I even keep on this path? That is really, really common. 

In today's coaching conversation that I have with Marissa, this question came up about her relationship with the scale. As you listen to this conversation, you're going to start to notice that there's stuff underneath that. What we start to talk about doesn't have to do with the scale at all. I talk with Marissa about how this experience of jumping from diet to diet to diet tends to play out. It's very easy to always think the next thing is going to solve my problem, the next thing. Then when it gets hard, we jump ship and we go to the next thing and the next shiny object. That's a really common pattern that I see. The women who are successful aren't the women who test out and try out as many diets as possible. They're the ones who are able to make it to the other side of what I like to call the messy middle. Every approach is going to have one. Every time you start something new, it's going to have a messy middle. Your ability to be able to tolerate the messy middle and push through to the other side is what is going to make you successful, not jumping ship and just trying out something else. This conversation that I have with Marissa is really applicable if you find yourself always quitting when it gets hard, if you find yourself jumping from diet to diet, or if you find yourself really struggling with stepping on the scale and feeling a lot of negative emotions. Let's dive into it. 

Amber B 03:07

That's all good. Okay, how can I help? 

Marissa 03:10

Okay, well, I'm kind of embarrassed to even have this as an issue because I felt like it was something from my past that I've gotten over.

Amber B 03:21

Yeah.

Marissa 03:21

But clearly not. I am just having a really hard time, like detaching meaning to the number on the scale. I know that's so common and I should have more grace for myself, but I feel like it's impacting just not my dedication to the process because I'm still doing it even though I'm hitting all my macros consistently. And I'm like really forcing myself to make measurements and take my weight and all of that. It's just like I want to be over it. I want to be past it. That's how I'm feeling. 

Amber B 04:02

Okay, perfect. I mean, there's no shame in this. This is a really, really common experience and kind of like I was talking about before with the onion or like I was talking about with Lily, oftentimes we learn lessons and we think, oh, good, I never have to learn that lesson again, but as we keep peeling back the onion, those lessons will kind of circle back around and there's something deeper for us to learn there. It's like you might have learned the initial stuff. Yeah, so this happens really frequently and I guess I just want to take a little bit of the shame away from anybody who has had the same experience. We're going to talk with Desiree later and I think this theme might come up again, but realizing that like when we learn a lesson, again, our human brains want to be like done and like move on and never revisit that and that's just not how life works and it's not how growth works. There's cliches or cliches for a reason, but new level, new devil is a very common experience and it's not like a new devil as like a completely new devil. It's like the same devil, but just a little deeper or a little bit, right? It's a devil in like a slightly new disguise and that's not abnormal, right? I guess that's what I'm trying to say. It's like that's not abnormal. That is actually the normal process for growth and so what we can say is I learned something previously and that was very helpful and I'm coming up against this again, which means there's something else here for me to learn. 

Marissa 05:23

Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's just another piece of data. 

Amber B 05:26

Yeah. And that's what we can unpack together, right? It's like, let's figure out, okay, what is this trying to teach me now when we can start to see problems as opportunities for lessons and opportunities for growth, we then stop hating problems. It just becomes an opportunity of like, there's something for me to learn. How can I learn this quickly instead of like, oh, I hate that this is coming back up.

Marissa 05:45

Yeah. Yeah. 

Amber B 05:46

So will you walk me through Marissa, what that, um, conversation in your head sounds like when that you're saying, Hey, I'm really struggling to detach meaning from the sale. What does it sound like in your head when that happens? 

Marissa 06:02

So when I step on the scale and I see that either it's not moving, like first of all, I try to, you know, go into my scientific data mindset where I'm like, oh, well, you know, it's probably because, um, I'm bloated because I've got my period or I had a lot of salt yesterday or like, you know, just, just give an explanation to it. And then I start to just sort of like, is progress never is, am I, I'm doing all of the things, right. And nothing's happening. So did that mean that I'm doing the right thing? It doesn't mean that it's so easy for me, like to jump, try to jump to like, and find hope and researching like the next new thing. 

Amber B 06:39

Yes. 

Marissa 06:40

And so I think like, that's where my brain goes, where it's like, well, maybe I, what if I cut out this food or what if I do this? Or what if it's inflammation from this? Or like, it starts, my brain starts to search for like, I think like a scapegoat almost of your it's because you're not doing this. And I think that's actually where, you know, why, why it's coming up for me now is because I had made a lot of peace with the weight that I was at and had made a lot of progress just in, you know, accepting my body after kids and not really making too much of the scale. Cause I had had an experience where I was like, a lot of chronic pain and I had lost a lot of weight and I, there was nothing that I wanted more than to just feel healthy again. And I didn't care.

I was like, I will be like a hundred pounds heavier than I am if I just feel good again. And so like, that was really transformational for me. And then I had kids and like everything, like, but I was never like really other than like a short, like three months with my gym, like Brian to actively like lose weight. And so I think now that I'm like putting in all of the work, I'm like, well, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Like, Oh, well maybe this isn't the right thing. See, you're doing everything and nothing's changing. So like change isn't feasible for you. And like, I think that's why it all coming up. 

Amber B 08:04

So yeah. Good. Okay. There's, there's some really good stuff that we can dive into here. Um, the first one I want to, uh, mention is one that is really common. And that is what you kind of talked about of like the shiny new object syndrome and this idea that like, if I just try something else, then the idea is if I just try something else, then I'm not going to hit this messy middle portion that I'm in right now. 

Marissa 08:25

Yeah.

Amber B 08:26

And, and it's lofty and it's hopeful. And it's like, and what I will say is that everybody hits the messy middle always and forever. Amen.

Marissa 08:36

Okay. Okay. 

Amber B 08:37

Everybody's going to hit the messy middle. So like anything else that you do, we'll always have a messy middle, but always like anything has a messy middle. And so what it really becomes is how do I navigate the messy middle? Not can I avoid the messy middle, but how do I navigate it? Okay. And so what we can first say is like, you're in it, right? You're in that, that uncomfortable place of like, it's messy. We don't have a clear path. We don't know exactly what we're doing. We're not quite getting the results that we want. We're not getting the feedback we want. We're trying new things. We're throwing spaghetti against the wall and we're in the like uncertainty phase. And what I want to help you to grow is your muscle to be able to withstand that uncertainty. 

Marissa 09:20

Yeah. Which like historically is not something that I've done.

Amber B 09:26

Right. Yeah. It's just, I mean, it's a, it's a muscle, it's a skill. It's, it's like anything else. Like we develop the skill by being in it and saying it, you know, you don't, you don't build muscle by like picking up a dumbbell and then putting it down and never touching it again. You develop the muscle by doing the reps and staying in the difficulty of doing the reps. Um, and it's the same thing here. And so for a lot of us, yeah. Lily said the uncertainty muscles weaken me as well. That's a human phenomenon guys. Like you're not abnormal. This is a human brain. Our, our brain hates uncertainty. Again, evolutionarily that made a lot of sense when we're looking out for lions and tigers and bears and anything that can harm us. We have this negativity bias and we don't, we want, our brain wants to be able to predict that everything's safe around us. And so we, that's just how our brains have developed. That's very normal. And our brains are plastic, meaning like we can actually rewire our brains. And so being able to tolerate uncertainty is a skill that you don't aren't naturally born with, but that you can develop. And that's, what's being asked of you right now. That's what's being asked of a lot of you guys right now. It's just like, you're in the messy middle. There's a lot of uncertainty. I don't know if I'm doing it right. This isn't working the way that I want to. And you think something's wrong. And what I'm telling you is there's nothing wrong.

Marissa 10:47

Okay. 

Amber B 10:48

It's you're at the gym, babe. Like this is the gym. And now we got to learn to tolerate the discomfort. And that that's the lesson that you're learning right now. It's like, what does that look like on a cognitive self-talk level to be able to tolerate the uncertainty and make it through to the other side, not to go jump ship and try something else. Cause guess what? It's going to have a messy middle too. You're going to hit the same point again, again, and again, and again, until we, 

Marissa 11:15

I mean, I have, 

Amber B 11:16

Great. Yeah.

Marissa 11:17

I haven't even gotten into the execution phase of most things that I try to do because it's like, oh, well like again, shiny new object. I love that term.

Amber B 11:27

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, maybe that thing won't have the problems that I'm currently experiencing, but again, like that, this is par for the course. So you're going to hit it every time. And it's like, how many times you need to hit it before we just buckle down and figure out how to get through this one jumping ship. 

Marissa 11:43

Yeah. A hundred percent. 

Amber B 11:44

Okay, cool. So that's the first thing that I wanted to point to. Um, the second thing that I wanted to point to, I think, I think this is a really important point because you said something about, um, well, how it sounds in your head. It's like, you step on the scale, it's not moving. And then we leap to like, um, rationalization. Okay. Where it's like, oh, it's not moving because I ate more salt yesterday, or I didn't, didn't work out or blah, blah, blah. Right. And I'm not saying any of that is wrong and, and could be very accurate. Right. What I think is the problem is how it's coming out for you, because it, it sounds like a way to escape from the discomfort of the number rather than a logical explanation. Like it's, does that sound accurate? 

Marissa 12:30

A hundred percent. 

Amber B 12:31

Okay. Yeah. So it's a way to escape from the discomfort rather than to like learn to tolerate it. Um, I think it actually, for you might be even, uh, more powerful to not have to justify or come up with a reason, right. It's like, we can just stay in the fact that the scale hasn't moved. I don't like that. And I can just, I can tolerate it. Like, I don't have to rationalize it. I don't have to justify it. I don't have to do anything. I can just learn to tolerate that the number showed up. That's different than the number that I desire or want. 

Marissa 13:09

And I don't have to, I, I can, I don't have to try to escape my own discomfort with how I'm feeling about it too. Like, cause I think that's for sure what I do where it's like, I don't know, like, you know, you can kind of like vacillate between like strict adherence to something and restriction and then like go the opposite way to like just total acceptance of like, no matter what, like body positivity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I think like, then that creates feelings of shame when I am discouraged. Cause then it's like, so I think I almost like don't, I need to be okay with being uncomfortable with that number and like not attach meaning to that. It's like a meta. 

Amber B 13:53

You landed on it because what we often do is we don't think we should feel that way. And so then we shame ourselves for the negative emotions that we feel. So now not only do we feel discouraged and frustrated, but now we shame ourselves for feeling frustrated and discouraged, right? So now we've like just multiplied it. 

Marissa 14:13

Yeah. Just bad feelings all around. 

Amber B 14:17

And then, and I don't know if you're, you're going this place, but I see it a lot. So I'm going to point it out for anybody else who's listening. And then what ends up happening is it is a very easy way to rationalize quitting, right? Because then we can, we can rationalize easily with ourselves where I'm doing this thing. It's not working. I feel bad about myself. I feel bad that I feel bad about myself and it's going to be better if I just quit. And so then we feel, we feel fine with ourselves because that makes a whole lot of sense and it wasn't working anyway. And now I can just quit and still feel good about myself. Right? So it's an easy way that self-sabotage tends to unfold and happen, which is why it's so great that we're having this conversation because if we can stop it before it gets to that point, then we can make a lot of, make a lot of progress.

So, um, I had a thought you were talking about body positivity and that swing between, um, like perfectionism and restriction and then swinging the other way. And what I wanted to say about that is there's nothing wrong with body positivity in a whole, unless you're using it to get away from yourself, unless you're using it to, to not learn to be uncomfortable. Does that make sense? Right? You can be positive and it can be very healthy and somebody else could be body positive and it could be a way that they don't have to experience discomfort.

Marissa 15:37

Yeah. I think that I definitely have used it as a way to like avoid how I'm truly feeling about things. And so I'm not really being positive. I'm just lying to myself. So, 

Amber B 15:47

Right. That's right. And so then you went one step further because you said it's not moving. Then you make all these rationalizations to like, make yourself feel okay. And then you say, I still do it. I still do the thing. And, but I'm going to add these words, but you're doing it resentfully. 

Marissa 16:00

Yeah.

Amber B 16:01

Right. Yeah. So there's a big difference between doing it resentfully and doing it happily. 

Marissa 16:07

Yeah. 

Amber B 16:08

Or you can do something. And, um, the, the, the end result will be very different if I, if I do it resentfully versus if I do it happily.

Marissa 16:15

Yeah. 

Amber B 16:16

So I'm not saying that you have to like pretend happy and like put on a happy face and like be happy, like happy, happy, happy, happy. Right. I'm not saying that I am saying that it makes sense. The pattern in the cycle that you're in, because we feel this discomfort. We feel like we have to rationalize it. We feel like it's not okay that we feel disappointed. And so then we grit our teeth and we do the dang thing that is I really want to do. And I do it all resentfully. And then we wonder why we're not being successful. Okay.

Marissa 16:41

Because he wants to do that for a long time. 

Amber B 16:43

Exactly, exactly. Right. And then we quit and then we go find another shiny object. And then we hit the same messy middle thing. And then we jump ship and we do it, you know, that pattern over and over again. So what is the solution? Well, we talked about one part of it is just learning to experience discomfort in feeling right, right now we're talking about feelings like the discomfort of like, I don't like the number that it's on the scale and I'm disappointed in it. And I'm frustrated by the number and sitting with that and not trying to rationalize it, not trying to make it wrong or bad or go away or anything like that. But understanding that like, I can tolerate those difficult emotions, emotions, just energy. They're just, it's just a feeling and I can tolerate it. And I can sit with it and it's okay that it's here and emotions rise and fall and they pass. And I can, I can tolerate sitting through that.

Marissa 17:36

Yeah. Yeah. 

Amber B 17:37

And then we're separating out again, what's fact the scale went up two pounds today. Okay. That that's the fact, but we're not jumping into interpretation of like what that means about you or your journey, because the real interpretation is just like, I'm in the messy middle and I'm learning to tolerate the uncertainty of this time. And that's the muscle that I'm trying to build right now, because if, and when you build that muscle of uncertainty, big new, it'll tolerate uncertainty, Marissa, how do you think that will impact your journey? 

Marissa 18:11

Um, I'll be able to stick with things long-term. I'll be able to like ride out the storm, so to speak, um, like really, truly like take a step back and interpret trends over time instead of just like the feeling of one day, um, and make rational decisions because it's not coming from a place of emotion. 

Amber B 18:41

Yes. What you were saying is that you'll be able to figure it out. 

Marissa 18:44

Yeah. I'll be able to figure it out. 

Amber B 18:48

And so, and so this is such an important point because I'm not, I listen, I'm not saying that you just have to accept the scale and just make peace with it. Right. And you just accept it. And just like, you can't change anything. I'm not saying that I'm saying, yeah, we're probably going to need to make tweaks and maybe we do need to make some adjustments. And maybe we do need to play around with your macros or your workouts or whatever, like maybe we do need to make some adjustments, but we can't do that. If we're dealing over here with like the uncertainty and not able to deal with that. It's like, we gotta, we gotta get the uncertainty deal with that. And then when you can tolerate the uncertainty, you will figure it out. We'll figure it out. 

Marissa 19:29

And I'll trust myself because it's not going to be, I think that that's a big thing. It's like, I'll trust to the things I'm making and it's not just me reacting out of like, oh my gosh, like panic, but it's like, okay, no, like I could trust that I'm doing this out of peace. Yeah. I think, which is like really powerful.

Amber B 19:48

Yes. Um, there are actions and there are feelings and motivations behind the action and two people can do the very same action and have two different experiences because of the feeling, the motivation behind it. That was my point of like doing it happily versus doing it resentfully. If I was just watching you, I may not be able to tell the difference from the outside, but it's a very different experience and it yields very different results. And so like, sometimes we just want to push ourselves to go through the motion and there can be some value in that, but recognizing that what's behind it really, really matters. 

Marissa 20:24

Yeah. And it's so crazy that like the key to getting to a better head space and like a better feeling where action can spring from is tolerating the discomfort. Cause I try to jump over that face all the time. Yeah. I'm just like, well, I just need to be okay with this. And it just doesn't work that way. Um, 

Amber B 20:44

Yeah. Yeah. Anything we try to shove down is only going to come back harder. Right. And so when we make our, our feelings and our emotions, particularly our feelings and emotions wrong, it's us trying to suppress them and push them down and they only come back bigger, but when we can sit with them and we can tolerate them and we can hold them and we can recognize like, this is an emotion, it will pass and I can tolerate feeling it. We don't have that experience. 

Marissa 21:07

Yeah. And it's so funny because it's like in the week that it took for me to, you know, register for this hot seat to now it's like the scale has moved, like because it was all of these things and it's like, had I just, you know, developed patience and peace in that uncertainty, I would have been like, oh, okay. Instead of like scrambling and feeling frantic. 

Amber B 21:32

That's right.

Marissa 21:33

So yeah. So yeah, it is. Um, my goal is to tolerate negative emotions. 

Amber B 21:39

Yeah. It's a really good skill to develop and one that a lot of adults haven't mastered yet. So you're ahead of all.

Marissa 21:46

Nope. All right. Thank you.

Amber B 21:48

Awesome. Good Marissa. 

Final Takeaways 21:51

Now, if you resonated with Marissa's story today, I want you to know you are not broken. Your brain isn't wrong for wanting certainty. Like that is just how we as humans are wired. But I also hope that you're taking away from this conversation that the messy middle isn't something that you can avoid. Like it's, it's not like if you find the right plan, there will be no messy middle. It is something you, it's a skill you have to learn to navigate. And when you build that muscle to tolerate uncertainty and you learn to sit with uncomfortable emotion, that is when you're able to be successful because you stop quitting when things get hard. You stop jumping ship to the next shiny object and you actually stick around long enough to figure out what works for your body. And that is a skill that will create lasting transformation. Not jumping to another meal plan, not starting another program, your ability to stay in it when it's messy.

Now, if you want help building that school skill and learning how to navigate your own messy middle, because it's going to look different for you, MACROS 101 is where we do that together. So you can head to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist to get on the wait list to join our next MACROS 101 cohort. Thanks for listening. I'll see you on the next episode. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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