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Why To (Maybe) Stop Using A Scale

me on the left before i decided to stop using a scale and on the right is a smiling man who decided to stop using a scale and is shirtless and more muscular

The picture on the left was me somewhere in the winter of 2015/2016 and I weighed 225 pounds. The picture on the right is me in August of 2020 and I have no idea what I weigh. Here is a little about my personal weight gain and weight loss story, and my decision to stop using a scale.

I started CrossFit when I was 23 and weighed right at 170 lbs. At the start, I would weigh myself religiously. I had a little muscle mass, mostly from high-school sports, and working physical labor jobs. I could crush body weight movements, as well as anything cardio. But when any substantial weight was added to a workout I struggled. This was difficult for me to handle, I had always been physically capable and never really struggled with exercise. But, CrossFit has a special way of humbling anyone who participates.

I was obsessed with the scale

My eating habits didn’t help things. I have discussed this previously which you can find here. Intermittent fasting, along with a strict paleo diet, left me wiped out after my workouts and unable to gain any real strength. During this time, I had only gained about 5 lbs of muscle. So after about 6 months of CrossFit, my goal became to gain weight and lift heavy. So I started eating, A LOT!  

I have never measured my caloric intake but here is an idea of how many calories I would take in. At the time I was working on Sundays. Before I went to work I would usually eat a lunch or two. I would also pack some food to snack on at work. Typically, it was grilled chicken, rice, eggs, a couple apples, 2 green smoothies, and a 2 lb bag of clementines. While at work I would also get a burrito from Chipotle, and then go to Smashburger where I would have a burger, fries/haystack onions, and a milkshake. When I got home I would have a couple of bowls of cereal, and usually some ice cream or donuts before going to bed.

Well I did gain weight and the weights I was moving went up. I quickly hit 190 lbs. Then 200 lbs. I got to 215 pretty easily, but my goal was to weigh 225 lbs. It was a struggle to make it to 225. I ate until I felt like throwing up, then I would sit down and let my stomach settle for about 30 minutes. Every day, usually multiple times a day, I would weight myself. I was obsessed with my weight. And I simply could not stop using a scale.

As you can tell, the 225 pounds was not a healthy life for me. While my weightlifting had increased, my cardio was abysmal. My life in general was a struggle. Walking up stairs or a hill at work had me winded. Bending over to tie my shoes had me holding my breath and trying to move my gut out of the way. My clothes started to get very tight. But I still weighed myself. Hitting 225 was nice. I reached my goal! But my body and certain aspects of my life were different. It left me looking for change.  

I decided 225 was the turnaround point for me, and that I needed to lose weight. I wanted to get back to looking good and being able to perform all movements well. In a few months, I dropped from 225 to 185. And still I checked the scale every day. 185 left me feeling weak in my lifts, and with little muscle endurance.  

Why I decided to stop using a scale

Over the years I have fluctuated between 185 and 200, but where I feel best at is 190 to 195. I can move enough weight for an athlete of my caliber, but my cardio and body weight movements still feel strong and fluid. About a year ago I decided to stop using a scale. I have an idea of what I weigh only because I have weighed myself so many times in the past. 

Now I am not concentrating on the number the scale gives me. I am concentrating on being happy and enjoying all aspects of my life. Obviously, health and fitness is a major part of my life. Feeling good and operating well in my workouts makes me happy and at peace. Another big part of my life though is food, and enjoying it with my family and friends. Being able to do so without worrying if the scale will change by even a pound makes me happy.

Can a scale be helpful in our health and fitness journeys? Of course it can, but it shouldn’t be the end all be all. The scale is like a photograph. It captures a split second of your life. Sometimes that second is good, other times it’s not so good. But that second doesn’t determine anything else. 

You might find it helpful to stop using a scale and stop worrying about the numbers. Worry instead about how many people you make a positive impact on in a day. Your life will be much happier that way.   

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Can I Build Muscle With Bodyweight Exercises?

doing push ups to build muscle with bodyweight exercises

Bodyweight exercises can get a bit of a bad rap in fitness circles. However, it is most certainly possible to build muscle with bodyweight exercises. Well, up to a point anyway. But regardless of your level of fitness, these functional movements almost always make a valuable addition to your workout regimen. 

They’re a perfect warm up or cool down. They combine cardio with strength building. They’re almost endlessly customizable. Plus, you can do them anywhere you want, anytime you want. What’s not to like?

How Does The Body Build Muscle With Bodyweight Exercises?

Muscles are mostly built by microtrauma. This is the proper name for the tiny tears your muscles get when you exercise. As the muscles grow back, they come back stronger than ever before – meaning visible gains. 

Depending on your level of fitness, bodyweight exercises may be enough to cause microtrauma to your muscle fibers. If you’re a beginner, you’re unlikely to need weighted resistance to make gains. 

Even if you’re already pretty ripped, there are many challenging bodyweight exercises that will be a great addition to your workout routine. They’ll help you get toned, get your heart rate up, and build your muscular endurance.

Which Bodyweight Exercises Will Give Me The Best Gains?

You’re spoiled for choice when you’re aiming to build muscle with bodyweight exercises. You have many options, and there are lots of great resources online to point you in the right direction. Here are some classic bodyweight exercises to use as a jumping off point.

  • Pull ups. This bodyweight movement is so challenging many people can’t even do one. They’re a great way to work your upper back – particularly the lats.
  • Planks. Even though you’re simply staying still in a prone position, this is a deceptively challenging ab exercise. When performing planks, make sure to keep your body in a super straight prone position for best results.
  • Push ups. These are a classic. From your plank position, simply bend your arms to lower yourself closer to the floor. Then, straighten your arms to raise yourself up again. If you find push ups too challenging, try doing them on your knees. If you find them too easy, there are countless modifications to make them more difficult.
  • Squats. These are a great compound exercise that works a big range of muscles in your legs, glutes and core. You can make them harder by doing jump squats, or one legged squats.
  • Dips. You can do these off of the side of a bench or chair. Dips are an excellent way to target your triceps and chest.
  • Lunges. These are a great way to work your quads, hamstrings and glutes. You can do them stepping forwards, stepping backwards, or to the side. Many people also enjoy walking lunges.
  • Calf raises. Calves are a famously forgotten muscle group, so don’t neglect them! This movement is super simple – just raise up on your toes and squeeze your calf muscles at the top, before lowering your heels back to the floor.

How To Maximize The Benefits Of Bodyweight Exercises?

There are many ways to get the most out of your bodyweight exercises. You can try:

  • Increasing tempo. Playing around with tempo is a great way to increase the benefits of your workout. Speeding up will get your heart pumping and help you break a sweat. Slowing down the movement will increase the time under tension, which will boost your muscle gains.
  • Doing more reps and sets. If you’re finding a movement is becoming a bit easy, simply doing more of them is a great way to challenge yourself.
  • Decreasing rest times. This is a particularly great technique if you want to reap maximum cardio benefits from your bodyweight exercises. Decreasing rest times is a straightforward way to increase your heart rate and maximize the cardiovascular benefits.
  • Adding holds. Try adding a pause at the highest tension point of your exercise. You’ll be surprised how much putting the muscle under tension for a longer period of time intensifies the movement.
  • Switching to single-sided movements. You know what’s harder than a plank? A plank with one arm tucked behind your back. Single side exercises are a great way to make your bodyweight exercise more challenging.
  • Try a WOD or a circuit. CrossFit WODs or circuit training are great ways to get your bodyweight exercises in. These workouts are specifically designed to maximize the burn and get great results from your workout. Join a group fitness class geared toward bodyweight exercises, or simply do some quick research and find a plan yourself.

What About When I Can’t Build Muscle With Bodyweight Exercises Anymore?

Once your body can comfortably lift itself, you’ll stop being able to build muscle with bodyweight exercises. If you can do twenty or thirty push ups without breaking a sweat or feeling much strain, it’s time to switch up what you’re doing. Otherwise, you’ll see a stall in your gains.

A straightforward way to get back to building muscle is to add some weight. Use your increased upper body strength to move into bench presses. The added resistance will get you back on track.

Or, if you don’t have access to weights or you just don’t want to use them, you can also modify the exercise. In the case of push ups, there are many great modifications. You could try spiderman push-ups, scorpion push-ups or clapping push-ups, to name a few. Do some research and find new, challenging bodyweight exercises.

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5 Effective Fitness And Nutrition Hacks

fitness and nutrition hacks a bowl of healthy fruit surrounded with muffins

So, you want results and you want them now? You want to know which fitness and nutrition hacks will work in your favor to get you shredded as soon as humanly possible.

Well, luckily, there are steps you can take to optimize your muscle growth. We all know patience is a key part of building muscle. Still, it’s natural to itch to see results from your hard work in the gym.

In this post, we’ve rounded up some tried and tested fitness and nutrition hacks to speed up your journey on the road to ripped.

1. Eat enough protein

This macronutrient is crucial for building muscle. Cut out your sugars, slash your starches and processed carbs: protein is your best friend when it comes to making gains.

You don’t need to consume hundreds of grams of protein every day. If you do this, your body will just store it as fat. Scientific research shows that 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight is best for someone who is trying to build muscle. So, if you’re sitting at 200 pounds, you’re looking at 160 grams of protein each day.

Opt for low fat sources of protein. Chicken, turkey, pork, beef, fish, milk, yogurt and eggs are all great options. If you’re struggling to get enough into your diet, a great nutrition hack is to stir a bit of protein powder into a yogurt for a quick and high-protein snack.

2. Do compound lifts

To build muscle, you should regularly do lifts that work several muscle groups at once. These are called compound lifts and include deadlifts, bench presses, squats, military presses, kettlebell swings and pullups.

There are many benefits to compound lifts. These exercises are an effective form of cardio, improve flexibility, and help you to build muscle fast.

When performing compound lifts, lift as heavy as you possibly can. Do more sets, and less reps. 5 sets of 5 reps is a good rule of thumb. At the end of your 5 reps, if you physically couldn’t do another then you know you’re lifting heavy enough. If you think you could do more, you need to up your weights.

3. Pre-exhaust your muscles

This popular fitness hack involves performing an isolated exercise, and following it with a compound exercise that works the same muscle group. For example, you could do leg extensions before doing squats. 

When you do your compound lift, your muscle fibers will be damaged from the isolated exercise you just did. This means they’ll be primed for optimum muscle growth. 

You’ll also feel each rep more on the compound lift. This helps you to perform high-quality sets.

4. Get enough rest

Sleeping well and taking enough time out of the gym is highly important. This is one of the easiest fitness and nutrition hacks for building muscle fast.

On your rest days, do some light cardio to stretch out, such as a half-hour walk or even some yoga. There are many great ways to help your muscles recover.

Many people also recommend cold showers as part of a rest routine. The cold water increases blood circulation which allows you to recover faster and get back to working out. Cold showers also strengthen your immune system and promote endurance.

Whether or not you’ll be jumping into a cold shower, make sure you get enough sleep. Building muscle involves tearing apart your muscle fibers in the gym, and rebuilding them better and stronger from the protein you fuel yourself with. This rebuilding process happens when you sleep, so it’s absolutely vital to spend enough time in bed.

5. Take progress pics

Of course, taking photos isn’t going to directly affect your muscle growth. However, this is a great fitness hack to help keep your motivation up. Taking pictures of your body at the start of your fitness journey to look back on is a concrete reminder that you ARE building muscle.

When change happens slowly, it can feel like your hard work isn’t making a difference at all. If you take some pictures of yourself from different angles, after a few weeks you’ll start to see how far you’ve come.

Documenting your progress is a great way to motivate yourself to hit the gym when you’re having a lazy day.

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Tempos, Pauses And Holds

tempos pauses and holds being completed during kettlebell squat

If you asked most people what the secret to getting stronger is, most would say lift more weight, or do more repetitions. This strains the muscles, therefore theoretically cause them to grow. Sure, that’s good and all. But, there’s a simple hack to get stronger. This is…tempos, pauses and holds.

What are tempos, pauses and holds?

Let’s use the squat as our example.  A typical squat goes something like this: 

Push hips back and down as if reaching for a chair to sit on. Keep the chest up as the hips go down. Once the hips are lower than the knees, push the floor away. Leading with the chest stand up to return to starting position.

Now let’s add in a tempo and a pause:

Push hips back and down as if reaching for a chair to sit on.  Keep the chest up count to 5 as your hips go down.You should reach 5 once the hips are lower than the knees. Come to a complete stop in this position and count to 3. Push the floor away. Lead with the chest as you stand up and return to the starting position.

Yes, it’s the same movement. But, focusing on tempo, pauses and holds causes the muscles to be under tension for a longer time per rep. This is known as time under tension.  

How does time under tension work?

When muscles are placed under tension the fibers tear. When these tears heal, the muscles grow back stronger. This is how muscles are built.

Time under tension comes into play because your muscles must spend time pushing, pulling and flexing to break down. Theoretically, the more time our muscles spend pushing, pulling, and flexing the more tension they are under and the stronger they become.

By adding tempos, pauses and holds to a movement your muscles spend more time under tension. And the really awesome thing is that you don’t have to use heavy weights or do more reps.  

But I like heavy weights…

Yes, of course, who doesn’t like lifting something heavy and having that instant gratification? But guess what? We should be varying our weights. It’s good to lift heavy sometimes…but not all the time.

Heavy weights and high rep ranges can cause issues, such as:

  • Stress on joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles, and bones
  • Injury. Poor form with heavy weight or lots of reps is a good way to get hurt

Also, due to Covid-19, gym equipment has recently been hard to come by. A great benefit to tempos is that you need very little weight for them to work effectively.

Are there times you need to add more weight? Yes, of course. But for the average person, a focus on tempos, holds and pauses and getting into proper form will pay off. This is way more valuable than just picking up heavy weights with bad form.

What benefits come from tempo work?

  • Less overall stress on the body and central nervous system. If you’re used to lifting heavy, this will be a welcome break for your body
  • Ability to focus on what muscles are recruited for each movement. This is a good test for if we are using the proper ones
  • Our focus shifts to proper movement and form, instead of how much weight is being moved
  • Less equipment is needed, especially weight
  • You get a deeper understanding of your movement 

How do I incorporate more tempos, pauses and holds?

Adding tempo work is easy, and one of the nice things is how many options you have.  The possibilities are endless. A good rule to remember is only do your tempos, pauses and holds as long as you can maintain good form.  Adding a 10 second pause to a front squat will only help if you keep good front squat form.

When you do add these to your training, make sure to keep the ego in check.You will have to be using lighter weights than you usually do. Some people have a difficult time with this and give up on the tempo work. But I can promise you that, if done properly, this strategy will only increase your numbers and help you break plateaus.

Have a tempo combo you love? Let us know what your favorites are!

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