2992: What the Bathroom Scales Are Not Telling You by Skylar Liberty Rose with Tiny Buddha on Health Beyond The Scale

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[00:00:51] Hello everybody and welcome to another bonus episode here on ORD and I'm your host Greg Audino. This week we'll be sharing previous audio from our health show, Optimal Health Daily, which you can find along with all of our shows by searching for Optimal Living Daily in your podcast feed. So with that, here's Dr. Neil with the post as well as his insightful commentary as we optimize your life.

[00:01:17] What the bathroom scales are not telling you by Skylar Liberty Rose with tinybuddha.com Quote, the only person who can pull me down is myself and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore. See Joy Bell. At a recent visit to the doctor's office, I had some routine checks done. Afterward, the doctor flipped through the findings and said, blood pressure, good. Pulse, good. Weight, okay.

[00:01:44] He then continued to talk about other things, but my mind was still on his previous words. Weight, okay. Why wasn't my weight good, like my pulse and blood pressure? I had managed to completely skim over the fact that my vital signs were absolutely fine. I immediately fixated on the physical aspect and added my own negative slant to it. There is so much that is so deeply ingrained within us that even when we are self-assured, we still get caught off guard sometimes. A few weeks before the doctor's appointment, I'd gone shopping for a winter coat.

[00:02:13] I found one I liked, grabbed two sizes for comparison, and went to the fitting room. One size was slightly too snug under the arms, and the other gave me more freedom to move. But the better fitting coat had a label that read, large. And I had a problem with it. I tried both coats on again, as though somehow expecting a different result. I told myself I was just making sure, just being certain. Once again, I determined that the larger size was a better fit. Except this time, I played it a little differently.

[00:02:42] Instead of just looking at my body shape and size and my reflection, I looked into my eyes. I reminded myself that I am a beautiful, empowered person who does not permit herself to be restricted by limiting labels, and who does not measure her self-worth by numbers. And off I went to the cash register smiling. Both experiences gave me a bit of a wobble, but I was also grateful for the opportunity to remind myself of what truly matters. It can be challenging at times to keep our confidence intact,

[00:03:10] because even when we deflect the worst of what some of society and almost all of the media tries to throw at us, occasionally it finds a way through. Yes, I could be slimmer. I could say no to the glass of wine or the homemade fudge. I could. But, empowerment alert, I don't want to. I choose my life. All of it. I choose the thoughts that I feed my mind, and I choose the food that I feed my body. I strive to ensure that I'm in balance.

[00:03:39] There is a space between greed and deprivation, and I, mostly, live there. Sometimes I wander. I'm okay with that. Because honestly, it's better for me to visit both directions occasionally than to be bent on staying firmly in the middle. I follow a plant-based diet, and I exercise every day. But I don't want to be fixated on a so-called ideal and unrealistic image that doesn't allow me to enjoy my life. Sometimes, a little loss of control is good for the soul.

[00:04:07] Like many of us, I used to obsess about my weight. I would step onto the bathroom scales every single day and look to see if I could hit that magic number. Quite often, I did. I also had a variety of hospital trips that unearthed low blood pressure, repeated urinary tract infections, and a brutal inner ear infection. And that's why I went to the cash register with a large coat and a larger grin. The bathroom scales cannot tell me how much my contribution to this world counts. They cannot tell me the density of the passion I feel for what I do.

[00:04:37] They cannot tell me the value of my cherished relationships. What if we stopped measuring our waistlines and started measuring our magical moments? The ones where we laugh like lunatics with our friends. The ones where we look down and find our hand wrapped in someone else's. The ones where we let ourselves get gorgeously lost in a book or a movie. The ones where we fill up on love and get dizzy drunk with happy. Will you get to the end of your days thinking, I'm so glad I spent all those years sucking in my stomach.

[00:05:04] Or will you smile as you remember how much you enjoyed creating precious memories. Will your final thoughts be that you wish your thighs had been slimmer or smoother. Or will you just be grateful that they carried you. Will you ponder on what everyone else thought of your life. Or will you just think, I'm glad I did it my own glorious way. I may have the odd moment of self-doubt, which is basically known as being human. But there are many, many more moments where I remembered that I've come a long way since being that younger, slimmer, unhappier, less confident person.

[00:05:34] I now have a wonderful weapon. An empowered mind. And believe me when I tell you, that doesn't play small. You just listened to the post titled, What the Bathroom Scales Are Not Telling You. By Skylar Liberty Rose with tinybuddha.com And Tiny Buddha has some great books on their site. I'd recommend checking out the Tiny Buddha Gratitude Journal. It has questions and prompts for both your past and present.

[00:06:02] You can find that at tinybuddha.com Now to be clear, I can feel pretty confident that the author isn't saying, Well just be happy with yourself even though you may not be the healthiest person that you could be. Instead, what the author is saying is, don't be obsessed with it. So sometimes what happens is folks will say, Well I'm happy with myself even though I have high blood pressure. I have an increased risk for all these diseases. My blood sugar is way too high.

[00:06:31] And again, the author is not saying that you wouldn't want to try and improve those things. You just don't want to become hyper-focused on imperfections. Be the best self you can be. I think that's what she's trying to get at. And if I were to get more technical about that scale, It's so true. The scale doesn't tell you so many things. And if we just think about straight numbers, the scale doesn't tell you how much muscle you have versus fat, versus water, versus your skeletal structure. It just gives you a number.

[00:06:59] And so it's easy to get disheartened by just looking at that number on the scale. Well, if we don't dig a little deeper, and maybe measure our waist and our hips, and see if those have decreased, or if we don't check our body fat percentage, the number on the scale really doesn't tell us a whole lot. But if we start combining that number with other factors, again, like your waist and hip circumferences, or your body fat percentage, or how your clothes are fitting,

[00:07:27] well now we can get a better picture of what that number really means. I've experienced this many times where folks will come to me frustrated after I've been working with them saying, the number on the scale isn't going down. And then I'll say, well how are your clothes fitting? Oh, they feel great. Well okay, then we're actually making some progress. You probably built some muscle and lost some fat. That sounds like a good thing, right? So yes, the number on the scale can be definitely misleading in a more concrete way, but also as the author mentioned,

[00:07:55] in a deeper, more emotional way. I thank you as always for listening. I'll see you back here tomorrow with a post from Healthline, and where your optimal life awaits.