I had a really interesting experience at the gym the other day.
A client at the gym came in for a ‘bod-pod’ analysis. Essentially, a body composition measurement tool that would tell her the percentage of her body that is fat mass vs. lean mass. It’s considered one of the gold standards in body composition measurement, so deemed quite reliable. Whatever those scales even mean.
You know what else is considered top-notch in body composition measurement? A DEXA scan. Remember that time last year I had a DEXA scan and it measured me at 33% body fat and thus obese? Huh. Totally obese, over here. Thanks for all the great insight, DEXA scan.
(ME! Feeling great at “33% BF and obese”.)
Back to this woman. This woman looked fab. Fit, curvy, muscular, feminine, strong. But, she was very nervous. Nervous going in to the room for her bod-pod.
10 minutes later she came out with her results literally screaming and jumping for joy! “I’m lean, I’m lean”, she exclaimed. “I’m not fat!”, she shouted. Massive smile on her face, her joy was contagious for everyone in the gym.
I was realllllly happy for her, because she was so happy. But at the same time I felt super, majorly bummed out. What if the results had said she was ‘fat’? What if the results didn’t reflect the effort she was putting forth or what she was hoping to see?
Because the results told her she was lean, she felt lean. She felt light. She felt fantastic about herself. She felt worthy.
I couldn’t help but wonder how she would have felt if the results were the opposite. Would she have come out of the room jumping for joy, with the same big smile plastered on her face? Sadly, based on her reaction, I highly doubt it. She probably would have been extremely disappointed in her results. All based on these numbers alone.
The thing about my DEXA experience was that it didn’t faze me. A younger me probably would have been rocked, shaken. I would have devised up an intense training plan and strict diet to get myself out of the “obese” category and into the “average”.
(Side note: I’ve always been on the overweight and heavy side on ALL standardized scales. Those things are bullish*t. Stop reading them and judging your body based on them.)
Mostly, I hope that if I had different results on the DEXA, in my case results that ‘told me’ I was lean, I wouldn’t have been fazed by that either. Because, the truth is, I know what’s going on in my body and I don’t need numbers to confirm or deny it.
How I think and feel about myself today doesn’t depend on body composition measurements. How I workout and how I eat doesn’t change depending on what the scale says or what category my body composition is determined to be.
Listen in to your body. What does it need? How does it want to move? What things make it feel best? Do those things. You don’t ever need to wait until some arbitrary measurement tells you that it’s good enough, light or heavy enough, lean or fat enough.
Tell your girlfriends, your wife, your sisters and sistas, your mama, your daughters. Anyone you think could benefit from the freedom from numbers and scales.
JMG
Ps. If you’re so inclined, pop over to the right hand side of your screen and nab 2 FREE bodyweight workouts, which you’ll get immediate access to! Safe for pre/postnatal and anyone healing a Diastasis Recti 🙂
