Death to Your God: Stop Letting The Scale Control Your Life

Let’s get one thing clear here. 99.99% of you hold the weight scale as an indicator of progress/failure around your fitness routine. 99.99% of you are bonafide morons. Yes, we’re going tough love on the blog. It’s the only thing that’ll work at this point.

Fun fact: The human body is composed of bones, fat tissues, muscles, organs, liquids, probably some poop, more liquids and a few other ingredients thrown in for good measure.

Want to know what the only thing the scale shows you? All of it. A combined number of all of that. Want to know what the only thing you’re seeing when you look at the scale? Fat.

The human brain is ridiculous like that, it sees what it wants to see, and for some reason we’ve become hard wired to read those numbers as connoting only to fat. Our brain conveniently forgets we’re made of muscles and bone and only sees the number as indication of fat content. And my God we’re fat. So fat. I better put in three more hours on the treadmill yo! That shit won’t burn itself!

Yes, there are scales that can measure your body mass by content, it can tell you how much fat % you’ve got in relation to your muscle %, but you won’t find those in your average gyms and certainly not in your bathrooms so for the purpose of this article, those scales don’t exist.

And neither should yours.

Your perception of fitness progress/failure should not center around those three or two digits on the scale simply because it does not account for actual progress unless you’re an obese 140-kilogram man who’s got more fat in him than a slap stick of butter; in which case those numbers decreasing is good news for your heart and bad news for your heart doctor.

Your progress indicators should pertain to things you feel and see. Like what, you ask? Well, for starters…

• How long you can go on the treadmill before panting out of breath and succumbing to the sweet sweaty embrace of death
• How much heavier you can lift and how much you’ve progressed in that department since you started working out
• How your clothes feel looser and that your belt needs more tightening
• How your friends are family are commenting on how different you look
• How you see yourself in the mirror

The scale and its fancy digitized numbers can’t tell you any of that. All they can tell you is that you weight XX and you’re shit out of luck if you’d know how much % of that is fat or muscle.

This is a personal plea to stop letting gym and bathroom scales run your life and lead your progress. Did you step on the scale today and it said you’re one kilogram heavier even though you trained your balls off yesterday and were eating like an Olympian athlete? Have you considered the fact that you drink water which actually weighs something? Ever heard of water retention? Did you know your poop can weigh a substantial amount? Hell, your farts can actually weigh enough to tip off the scale by 300 grams sometimes!

Another negative aspect of focusing on the weight scale is in relation to those who take up weight lifting concurrently as part of a program to get fit (which includes fat loss) relates to muscle gain. Your weight scale - unless specialized - cannot tell you if those increasing numbers on the scale are muscle or fat, only you can tell that by seeing the difference on your physique.

My point is, you are more than a few digits on a screen. Your progress is not and cannot be limited by what you see on that contraption. Your progress is defined by you and no one else. You can run faster now, you’re stronger now, you need to buy smaller clothes, you look better, you feel better and you’re healthier; and your scale can’t tell you about any of it.

Pancakes: The All-Time Naughty Breakfast Favorite (Or does it have to be?)

Pancakes. Who doesn’t love the ever living shit out of a goddamn pancake? If you’ve raised your hand to indicate being such a person, please exit my blog and never visit it again. Then proceed to hang yourself from the gonads, because we don’t need your filthy genes in the gene pool.

Now that we’ve got that settled, back to our main topic. Pancakes. We all love them. Sadly for any who wants to be fit, they’re not exactly known for their muscle building/fat burning qualities. They’re sugary, heavy and we often go the extra mile of covering them with syrup and butter, because why the fuck not? If I’m clogging my goddamn arteries, I might as well be a bona fide artist at it, right?

Lucky for you youngling, I’m about to introduce you to one pancake recipe you can actually enjoy tomorrow morning that won’t only NOT add onto your expanding waistline, it may as well help you lose fat and pack on some muscle while you’re at it too!

Ingredients:

• 6 egg whites
• 1 banana
• 50 ml skimmed milk or almond milk (or zero sugar soy milk if you like that foul-tasting crap - which you can find in Gourmet or major chain supermarkets) Note: Ideally, this recipe would utilize sugar free almond milk, but since we live in a country where your only option to drink almond milk is to make your own, we’ll switch out to local ingredients for convenience’s sake. But lo and behold I've taught you how to make you own if you think it's worth it to really get the recipe just perfect!
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 5 tablespoons flaked oats - my recommended brand is  Emco’s Flacons D’Avoine and you can find it in damn near any supermarket around the cereal section in Cairo. If you have access to Quinoa from abroad it'd be fantastic as well since it's gluten-free.
• 1 tablespoon of honey (I prefer Royal jelly honey - most brands are the same, Isis, Vitrac it doesn't really matter)

Process:

• Separate the yolk from the white of your eggs (you can discard the yolk or choose to use it for something else if you are baking for instance!)
• Mix all the above ingredients in a blender or food processor until the desired pancake mix consistency has been achieved.
• Add on a sauce pan on your stove on low heat (just like you would an omelette or normal pancake mix) until it cooks
• Keep dishing out those bad boys and stack’em up on your plate

Bonus Tip: You can dice up strawberries, bananas or kiwis to add atop your pancakes to add more vitamins, anti-oxidants and fibers. You can also add almonds, pistachios or cashews to taste. Seasoned kitchen veterans can also add a tablespoon of nut butter into the blender to ensure that nutty taste becomes part of every bite.

Additionally, you can make some high protein sauce for your pancakes using whey protein. All you need is to mix one scoop of whey protein (preferably Optimum Nutrition’s Gold Standard chocolate flavor - or any flavor you prefer, it’s your dish goddamit) with 50 ml of skimmed milk/almond milk (or the zero sugar soy milk) and heat in the microwave under high power for 20-30 seconds and voila! You now have some high protein (roughly 24-30 grams of protein) sauce syrup to garnish your high protein pancakes.

Personally, I think it’d be a crime if you don’t work your ass off in the gym or the track right after enjoying this beauty. Your body’s now loaded with complex carbs and a ton of protein; creating the optimal condition for you to dish out some exercises and sweat it up.

Let me know how it tastes and comment below with your own healthy twist or additions you can think of to make it even tastier (and healthier)