This Week's Intentions: Mindful - Are you Tracking Progress with the Wrong Tools?

Welcome to your weekly digest of the Mindful Queer’s Wellness Club!

Happy Monday, March 27th!

Hope your Monday is the least Monday ever!

Hopefully you jumped on last week’s practice and added some new activities to your daily routine: Spend More Time Moving

One of the most underrated practices to start your transformation journey.

If you've began your quest for some significant life changes,

DO NOT overlook this.

Why?

Because starting a routine can be daunting AF.

We fall into the pitfall's many beginner's never seem to make it out of:

INFORMATION OVERLOAD 😱

🤔What's the best program?
🤔What's the best ways to lose weight?
🤔More cardio or more weights??
🤔What's the quickest way to achieve X?
🤔How can I get the body NOW?!?

If you've googled this or something similar, make sure to go check out last week's intentions & insights and get caught up with the Wellness Club so you can become your best and learn simple skills & daily actions that will transform your mind, body and spirit.

As we are approaching our 10th edition, I want to thank you for being a loyal Wellness Club member!

Starting this weekly newsletter has been a challenge for my consistency (ty adhd ✌🏽) & despite so many life changes recently, WE ARE STILL GOING!

So give the Wellness Club a shoutout on IG (@mindfulqueer) and spread the message to join Wellness Club.

The first rule of Wellness Club: YOU SHOULD TALK about Wellness Club.

If you’ve been keeping up, last week I launched my beta of my new training programs, with the goal of starting the program next month!

This week, we are in week 2 of the training program and wanted to share what we are doing in the gym!

If you missed out on the first wave of sign ups, you can ABSOLUTELY sign up to be apart of the release coming in April! - just sign up here!

Week 2's Focus is doubling down on Week 1.

From over a decade of programming, from bodybuilding, to athletic training, I've learned many disciplines and love many aspects of different training regiments.

I don't believe one program is perfect for anyone, but rather a collective of movements that compliment each other.

When we train in a program, the goal is keep as many of the variables the same.

That can include reps, sets, exercises, tempo.

Things we want to progress & change, if our goal is to improve within each program,

Can include weight, exertion, and rest.

So when we go through a simple four week program,

The goal isn't to change the entire program up, because then we wouldn't see any result,

Rather, the goal is to progressively get better within the 4 weeks.

So in week 2, just going through the motions again is all the focus!

This Week's Intention: Mindfulness

Are you tracking your progress with the wrong tools?

When you last visited your doctor for your annual check up,

🤸🏽Did they ask you how you incorporate movement into your life?
😫Did they ask about how you were dealing with stress?
🥱How you were sleeping?
🥗What types of foods are you eating?

When you did your normal routine check up - they typically check blood pressure, weight, BMI, etc.

Then the doctor makes recommendations based off your results.

When they look at your weight, height, and body fat %, they put you into two categories:

normal or obese

But what really is normal or healthy?

Who's standards are to say I am normal for my age & height?

I could tell you that I eat healthy, which could be true, but healthy is subjective.

Me eating a burger can be okay for me.

But eating a burger for you can be the most unhealthy food you could ever think of.

See these traditional measures of health -

BMI - an outdated, arbitrary, subjective label for categorizing the population

Scale - only tells one side of the story

BMI - Body Mass Index, a formula (mass / height), conceptualized by Adophe Quetelet in 1842

An outdated formula created in 1842 based on the dimensions of the average MAN and how they were manifest in the population.

It wasn't until 1972 in the US, when the research community began using BMI as a measure of health (In BMI We Trust)

And since, 1972, over 150,000 articles in leading scientific journals have referenced BMI in their text 🤯

But there's a problem with BMI.

BMI is such a readily available measure of health, and has become intertwined with the measure of obesity.

Whether it is accurate or not,

It has become the standard, used by medical professionals, researches and government agencies to dictate what is normal and what is not.

So what happens when you get the news you are obese?

I want to share a little insight into a decade of my transformation journey (which is still not over!)

Technically, I am obese.

I've been obese for well over a decade of my life.

I would have to be 190lbs to be "NORMAL"

I am sitting at 214 lbs currently, and imagining myself losing another 25 lbs doesn't sound like a healthy space for me, physically nor mentally.

For someone who is 6'2, I would be the twink version of me at 190lbs.

I would have to stop strength training and solely focus on cardiovascular fitness.

Back when I used to be 260lbs I tried everything to lose the weight,

Year and after year, I lost the weight, gradually.

In three years, from 2018 - 2020, I went from my heaviest to under 200 lbs.

I was so focused on the numbers being at what society was deeming me to be "healthy"

I lost touch of my training goals.

I lost touch of taking care of my body & challenging it

Instead I was focusing on trying to fit into norms that never were going to suit me.

It destroyed my relationship with food, made me hate my body, and made me think that I could never get to a place that I loved my body - aka body dysmorphia.

I did a podcast episode on body dysmorphia, muscle dysmorphia and gender dysphoria - check it out here!

This is from the National Heart, Lunge and Blood Institute, you can try it out yourself here

When it comes to the scale & our weight number,

Theres so many variables that can lead to 1-3 pound difference day to day.

That can be due to a multitude of factors, including:

💦Water weight,
🧂Sodium intake,
🍽️Food consumption,
🥵Water loss,
the list goes on and on.

What your Weight Check in Does NOT Tell YOU:

• How much progress your squat has improved in the past 6 months.

• The mental battles you have been dealing with.

• How great you feel after committing to transformation 3 months in.

• If the progress you make does not match up with the ways you value your health,

You are going to be pretty pissed off that the results you sought out aren't being accomplished.

So you give up or try something else.

You think that taking care of yourself is a waste of time and you falter on your habits.

But you're a smart bad bitch who knows that tracking progress with outdated tools is not productive nor healthy.

Instead, you track your transformation with more subjective measures of health that are in line with your values, identities and current challenges in life.

So how do I start measuring my health differently?

Well lets talk about what you deem healthy?

• What activities make your life seem fulfilled or vibrant?

• What non-negiotables do you have to check-off daily, weekly and monthly that help you at your job, in the gym, at home, etc
  
  It doesn't have to always be a weight or calories burned number every time.

Just like the infograph above,

• Tracking your sleep is a great way to measure how you are taking care of your recovery.

• Taking pleasure in eating nourishing foods is a great way to measure the progress you've made with your relationship with food again.

• Coping with life's stressors is a great tool to measure mental & emotional resilience-getting better at managing your own stress.

• Focusing on joyful movement helps create a better relationship with taking care of our bodies (and not just torturing it every workout)

When I ask every client, "How do you want to measure your progress?"

They always are hesitant.

They were never given a chance to track differently.

Some hate the scale, so we never touch one.

Some hate taking pictures, so we do not do that.

However you want to measure progress, do it.

• I LOVE swapping the scale for trying on the same pair of clothes each week & journaling.

• I LOVE weekly check-in journals rather than doing skin fold measurements.

• I LOVE having a performance goal in the gym to measure strength & growth.

These are just some examples of the many ways YOU can measure your progress when it comes to health outcomes.

It doesn't have to be outdated methods.

Let's be more mindful of how we track our progress.

We all have different goals and dreams.

Add some mindfulness into your progress and track differently!

Tag me in your story @mindfulqueer on instagram with ways you are measuring your progress in unconventional ways!! Use #WELLNESSCLUB in your post!

🫶🏽That wraps up the Wellness Club for this Monday!

Thank you for being a loyal subscriber, and keep an eye out for some new and exciting events coming up just for Wellness Club subscribers!

If you have any questions or feedback, please send a DM or email over!

Good vibes,

John Kim (They/Them)

THE MINDFUL QUEER