The Number on the Scale

I talk a lot about clean eating on this here blog. I like to share what I have learned over the past year and all of the wonderful recipes I have discovered. Clean eating has been so successful for me. I have felt great, lost weight, and learned to love foods that are good for me. There is just one piece of this little equation missing, and that's working out.

I've always been an active person. I played sports growing up, I like to go on walks, I try to take the stairs whenever possible, but I hate the gym. Like hate it with a burning passion. I also hate running and my asthma doesn't make it any easier. For me, it has always been about finding something that worked for me. I tried being a runner and even ran a 5k, but it has never been enjoyable to me. I stayed active growing up because I loved playing volleyball, but I stopped playing in college. Over the summer I developed my love for hot yoga and actually enjoyed going.

I started clean eating and doing hot yoga around the same time. I started to notice a little change in my body and lost a few pounds, but I didn't lose as much weight as I was expecting with all of the work I was putting in. The scale was still too close to the number I was used to seeing. I have never needed to lose a lot of weight or been that interested in losing weight, but to me it was more about pushing myself to be the best version of me that I could be.

When we moved to Okinawa, I continued eating healthy but stopped working out pretty much all together. I don't have access to bikram yoga here and as I have stated before, I hate the gym. This is when the weight started to melt off. Crazy right, not working out and losing weight? But I knew what was happening. I had built up a lot of muscle during the period of time I was doing yoga and now it was all disappearing. I knew my body was getting less toned, but I enjoyed seeing the smaller number on the scale. I never really cared about the number on the scale until I saw it dropping. It was exciting to see a number I hadn't seen since the beginning of high school.

I am proud of all the progress I have made with my eating habits, but I know that eating great is only one part of the healthy equation. I know that I need to get active again. I know that it is time to ignore the number on the scale and think about what is best for my body. Why is it that the damn scale can have so much influence over our minds? The number it shows doesn't even tell the whole story. It doesn't tell us how healthy we are.

I know it's just a matter of putting my mind to it and creating an exercising habit just as I have done with my eating. I know in the end the way I feel and the way my body looks will be so much more rewarding than the number on the scale. So right here, right now, I am committing to getting my heart rate up more often and putting in the work to get fit, even if that means increasing the number on the scale.

Does the scale get the best of you at times? Any great workout tips for people who hate the gym?