Have you ever done everything right — eaten well, moved more, slept properly — then stepped on the scales and felt your heart sink? I have. After fourteen weeks of the most disciplined health routine of my life, I stepped on the scales and discovered I'd gained three kilograms. That moment taught me more about measuring health than any textbook ever has.
When gyms closed during lockdown, I made a decision: I was going to be in the best possible shape to support my immune system. So I built a routine and I stuck to it, without negotiation.
Sleep came first, because sleep is fundamental to immune health. I was in bed between 8.30pm and 9pm every single night, with a consistent wind-down routine beforehand. My activity went up dramatically — my daily steps roughly doubled, from an average of 10,000–13,000 to somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000. On top of the walking I was doing body-weight and resistance work in the park, swimming in the ocean, and karate online. I was consistently doubling my daily energy expenditure target.
Nutrition was dialled in too: plenty of vegetables and fruit, adequate protein, real food. And I looked after my mental health deliberately — mindfulness, time in nature, time with family, phone and video calls with the people I care about. All the pillars of holistic health I talk about on the podcast every week, actually being practised rather than just discussed.
Here's the part that matters: I didn't weigh myself once in those fourteen weeks. Not once. When the gym reopened, I was genuinely excited to see the result. For the better part of two decades I've sat somewhere between 68 and 71 kilograms, usually around 69.
The scales read 72.
My first reaction was the same one my clients have in my clinic: what have I done wrong? I looked at myself in the mirror. I felt good in my clothes. I felt strong. Nothing about my body suggested I'd gained fat. And when I got back under the barbell, I could lift more than before — after fourteen weeks of barely touching a weight.
So what was the three kilograms? Honestly, I don't know. It may well have been muscle built through resistance work, karate and a genuinely good recovery environment. It may have been fluid. I can't say for certain, because I didn't have a body composition scan before or after. But here's what I can say with confidence: I was in better shape at 72 kilograms than I had been at 69.
A set of bathroom scales gives you exactly one number: your total mass. It tells you nothing about how much of that is lean muscle, how much is body fat, how much is bone, and how much is simply water. Two people at the same weight can be in wildly different states of health — and the same person can be, too.
This is why I get cautious when someone walks into my clinic fixated on a single number. Weight is a data point, not a diagnosis. If you genuinely want to track body fat and lean mass, you need a body composition scan — a DEXA scan is the gold standard — rather than a reading that moves two kilograms depending on how much water you drank and when you last ate.
Too often people arrive obsessed with the end outcome and almost uninterested in the daily behaviour that produces it. I'd like you to flip that around. If you have a strategy for managing, losing or gaining weight that is genuinely proven to work, your job is simply to do it — consistently — and to trust the process while it does its work.
That's exactly what I did. I had a process I'd used before, that I understood, and that I had good reason to believe in. So I ran it for fourteen weeks without once checking the end outcome. The discipline wasn't in the exercise; it was in not looking.
The key word there is proven. Trusting the process only works when the process deserves your trust. A fad you found on social media last Tuesday hasn't earned fourteen weeks of your faith. A well-established approach to sleep, movement, nutrition and stress has.
If you let go of the scales, you need something better to replace them with — and the answer is not one perfect metric, but several honest ones. Here's what I tracked instead.
Morning energy. Do you wake up with energy, or do you need coffee before you can function? Waking up genuinely energised is one of the best everyday signals that your sleep is working.
Sleep trends. I wear a wearable that gives me sleep data, and I look at it — but I don't obsess over it. My sleep isn't perfect, and it doesn't need to be. What I want is more good nights than bad, and a trend heading in the right direction. Life goes up and down; so will your data.
End-of-day energy. After doubling my energy expenditure, how did I feel at 8pm? Pleasantly tired is the right answer. Wiped out would have told me I wasn't fuelling properly. A little dip in the afternoon is normal and expected — that's your circadian rhythm doing its job, not a problem to fix.
Strength and capability. Can you lift, carry and move more easily than you could three months ago? That's health you can feel.
This is the heart of how I work with clients at me&my wellness. Health isn't a number you chase; it's a set of daily practices across sleep, nutrition, movement, mindset and relationships that compound quietly until one day you notice you feel completely different. My job is to help you find the process that genuinely fits your life — and then to help you trust the process when the short-term feedback gets noisy.
Want to go deeper on this? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Anthony at meandmywellness.com.au