Health isn’t all in regards to the quantity at the weighing scale.

The scale of weight alone cannot determine your overall fitness. Keep these fitness factors in mind for overall wellness.

No, we’re not going to tell you to stop checking your weight. Certainly, it is one of the factors to measure progress and it keeps us in control, alerts us and helps us at various stages in our fitness journey. But it’s also important to understand why it’s not all that matters and why you shouldn’t be giving all your attention. There are other factors of fitness as well.

While on our fitness journey or working on a fat loss path, we often make it a habit to check our weight every morning, after a cheat meal, on a holiday or festival spree. And to your surprise, this is the worst habit you can adopt because either you will find yourself demotivated and/or under a lot of pressure. This will often prompt you to take shortcuts in your journey.

Fitness doesn’t just mean a healthy weight. Image Courtesy: Shutterstock

The journey to fitness will never be progressively linear, but to make the most of it you need to start paying attention to and understanding the other factors that contribute to small wins throughout the process.

Being aware and focused on non-scale wins will help keep you moving forward, making the journey more enjoyable as well as relaxing. This will especially help if your aim is to achieve a sustainable lifestyle and be able to maintain your progress which one wants in the long run.

Here are some fitness factors that go beyond the weight scale:

1. Physical:

If there’s a physical activity you’ve been working on – lifting weights, playing a game of badminton every week, running/jogging every night, then the progress or scale you achieve by doing these activities is a big one. Victory. The rush to lift something heavier is like no other than last week. The joy of not panting and being quicker after a game is overwhelming. The feeling of being strong and sharp is more than a number on the scale. Gradually, you will see that these achievements are a result of your adequate diet and nutrition and the amount of food that you fuel yourself.

2. Health:

As someone who often works with women with PCOS, irregular cycles, hormonal imbalances or migraine pain, I see how frustrating it can be when they try their best to be healthy. For a lot of them, it’s not about the number on the scale. It’s not about dealing with painful periods, finding relief in their pain every day, being able to stick to the plan for long periods of time without getting sick, etc. Health is more than fitness. Improving your digestion, gut health and sleep cycles through your diet can affect not only your physical but mental health as well.

Also read: Don’t chase after rapid weight loss. It can pay the price for your health

3. Mental Health:

While the mental benefits are only apparent when you consciously focus on noticing them, it is one of the most important and obvious non-scale victories that goes a long way. Improved mood, focus on work, successfully achieving a lot at the same time are all signs that when you nourish your body, your mind feels the effect. But when you starve to achieve a certain weight on the scale, you’re tired, lethargic, and constantly cranky.

4. Mindset:

Progress in your mind may spill over to other aspects. If you are obsessed with food and experience constant guilt about food, it will affect your mental health more than you realize in the moment. Focus on nutrition, learning about food by improving your relationship with food and eating right will actually make it more sustainable for you. The change in mindset will mostly be your slowest victory, but eventually it will be the magic wand you’ve been looking for for so long.

Focusing on non-scale wins is more likely to keep you motivated in the long run than checking weight every day. These are the small victories that will keep you on a sustainable plan for life.

how to get fitness through weight scale

Don’t let a number on a gadget define you or your value. Want to lose weight, work on your fitness/health or body, just know your real reason for the goal. When you start giving importance to true victory in the journey, you will find yourself changing to set new goals as well as changing goals.