If you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you probably know how I feel about the scale.

That opinion was largely developed from my first six months of working at a training gym, where a scale innocently sat in the corner of the bathroom.

We used the scale, along with a handheld device to measure body fat, as a way to help clients get a baseline of metrics for when they started with us.

But what I was seeing on a daily basis wasn’t people using the scale as a starting point to gauge progress. I started to see clients coming in, looking defeated. When I inquired further, I found that when they went in to the bathroom to change for the workout, they’d hop on the scale.

Because it was there.

And if the scale didn’t reflect the change their brains felt it should, based on the effort they were putting in, they were walking in for a workout wondering why they should even bother.

So that’s when I took the scale out of the bathroom and ran it over with my car, and took a sledge hammer to it.

What can I say? I had feelings.

But over the years, I’ve evolved a bit.

If there is one thing that I’ve come around to in my time as a trainer, it’s the understanding that people need a way to gauge progress on this journey. Without it, staying the course can become incredibly difficult. There is a part of our brain called the ventral striatum that kicks in during decision-making to weigh the costs versus the benefits of our physical efforts.

I'm going to re-name this part of our brain Judge Judy. We'll just call her Judy for short.

According to research from Emory University, Judy weighs in on three phases of effort-based decision-making — the anticipation of initiating an effort, the actual execution of the effort and the reward, or outcome, of the effort.

Have you ever started...well....anything and decided it wasn't worth the effort? Recently I did a Facebook post asking where people get stuck in the process. And here is one of the answers:

If this sounds familiar to you, it's not your fault. It's Judy's fault (with apologies to everyone on this list name Judy....)

So how do you get around Judy?

Going back to my comment on measuring progress, this is where I think it's incredibly helpful to differentiate between process goals and outcome goals. Losing weight is an outcome goal. Dropping two pant sizes is an outcome goal.

Making a commitment to walk 7,000 steps at least five days a week is a process goal. Going to the gym twice a week is a process goal. You have complete control (for the most part), over whether or not your process goals happen.

But if your goal is to lose 10lbs in a month, you have less control over whether or not that happens. Sleep, stress, and hormones, just to name a few, can have a dramatic effect on whether or not you lose those 10lbs. So even if you follow a nutrition plan to the letter, you might not hit that goal.

And that's when Judy's all like "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY I WILL NOT EAT ANOTHER PACKAGE OF TUNA DUMPED IN COTTAGE CHEESE!"

I mean, that combination of food might gross you out just thinking about it, but it is jam-packed with protein.

In order to get around Judy, you need to trick her by changing the way you measure progress. So I highly encourage you to not only choose some process goals, but find a way to track that process. In order to hard wire a habit, our brains need a little hit of dopamine. That's where habit trackers can be helpful.

If you decide to set a step goal, perhaps your tracker is your watch. My Garmin First Avenger watch buzzes and gives me a giant Captain America sign when I hit my step goal, my weekly activity goal (minutes of activity), and as ridiculous as it sounds, I love getting my shout outs from the Captain.

I have my clients track their workouts through an app - they track everything, from walking, to stretching, to hitting their water goals. Sometimes just being able to check a box is all you need. Another popular habit tracker is the Jerry Seinfeld "don't break the chain" technique, of printing out a blank calendar and making an "X" every time you do your habit.

Whatever your technique is, just realize that it's not your fault if you hit a wall with progress and find it difficult to continue.

It's Judy's.

You're welcome.

I’m not great at letting go of things. I’m sentimental, so there are some material things I won’t let go of - Ben, my teddy bear from before I was born (seriously), my tattered first baseball glove I found under a tree when I was five, the Terrible Towel I clutch for every Steelers’ game.

But I also struggle in holding on to old feelings, ideas, and beliefs, clutching the latter especially like it is Ben, my trusted teddy bear.

Nowhere have those old beliefs bitten me more strongly than in my effort to workout through and around injury. Because what I, as a coach, might consider a workout for an injured client, hasn't been okay for me.

I haven't been willing to make the mental concession that a workout means to me right now isn't the same as it was three years ago. And I've had some pretty low moments even thinking about that concession.

I’ve written multiple times on how in most cases, it is possible to continue doing something while you’re injured. But like many coaches, I've struggled to take my own advice.

Between the mental guarding of my back and the unwillingness to adjust my expectations for myself (I'm just as stubborn as all of you...) these last six months have been a slog.

I've been stuck in the purgatory of not doing anything and then doing too much.

But this past week, I finally feel like I found my mojo (which, as it turns out, means magic charm..)

How?

Well, I took my first mental vacation in months, if not longer. Yes, it was a vacation from work, but more than that, it was a change of environment, much-needed time with family, and perhaps most importantly, a letting-go of expectations.

I can't really explain it, but after spending a few days floating in a pool and thinking about nothing but what game I should play next with my niece and nephew, I finally enrolled myself in a 21 day mobility and flexibility program that I'd been considering for awhile.

Basically, I hired a coach.

And I found some structure. I didn't know this was something I'd needed, but after just trying a few exercises here and there that I made up for myself, it felt unbelievably good to do a full 20 minute structured workout.

As it turns out, those were the missing pieces in helping me to let go of some old expectations and let my body guide the way.

The workouts, which don't necessarily burn a lot of calories or get my heart rate screaming, leave me feeling good physically. And feeling good physically has turned into a ton more energy for other projects that are really important to me.

So while I'll never let go of Ben, that baseball glove, or my Terrible Towel, I'm working hard to let go of some of those old beliefs that no longer serve me.

Years ago, when I was in the throws of my hiking life as an employee in Rocky Mountain National Park, I spent every day off doing one of the many hikes the park had to offer.

This is me with Dave, who offered to battle mountain lions with Neil Diamond songs.

At the start of every hike was a a sign exclaiming various truths about the mountain.

One truth was that a bobcat might eat you. My friend Dave always assured us that if he sang Neil Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman” at the top of his lungs, he’d keep any mountain lions at bay.

After hearing him sing, I agreed.

But the other truth proffered on every sign was that, quite simply, the mountain didn’t care.

You needed to get off of the mountain before the storms rolled in every afternoon.

The mountain didn’t care about your opinions, feelings or excuses. It didn't care if you started your hike late, as I did one afternoon, that you'd have to squat on one leg above tree-line to avoid the lightening strikes. Which was REALLY REALLY HARD.

You could offer all of the excuses you want, but the bottom line on the mountain stayed the same -storms would roll in above treeline in the afternoon because the mountain didn’t care.

And you know what? Fitness is no different.

You can’t buy fitness. You can’t steal results. You can’t fake effort and still get results. As much as I try to send out a message of kindness and compassion, I find this situation to be a case of both/and.

I want you to treat yourself with kindness and compassion and to be patient with your body, your mind and your efforts. But I want you to put forth the effort. Because if you don’t - fitness doesn’t care.

You absolutely, unequivocally, no bones about it, have to give something to get something. You have to. You have to show up and do the work. You either do the work or you don’t.

And if you are struggling to get results, are you being honest with yourself about your efforts?

I completely embrace your efforts to do the best that you can. I will cheer-lead you all day if you are doing a little more today than yesterday. I will be jumping up and down in your corner as you make the small changes, week by week, as you move towards your ultimate goals.

In the past five weeks, I’ve been doing my fair share of running, returning to the fitness routine that got me through my twenties and half of my thirties. And as I chugged my way up a hill today, I was reminded of an interview I saw years ago with Lance Armstrong, prior to his admission of drug use, where he talked about embracing the discomfort.

The only way to even participate in the Tour de France is to embrace the pain and discomfort that came with the ride.

I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer - but let’s face it, if you really want results, you need to expect some struggle.

You have to, in the words of my former college lacrosse teammate Sandy, embrace the suck.

Because fitness doesn't care.

And I mean that in the nicest way possible...