My scale pulled my mental fire alarm again!
First… I weigh myself daily. No, I am not obsessed. It’s my body and it’s my practice. The way that people talk about other people’s practices… the need for opinions on every single thing another person does… it drives me nuts.
Second… after being up and down in weight due to a barrage of different reasons (trauma, childhood eating habits, eating disorder, moving a ton of times, divorce… yes, all due to situations and my reactions & coping mechanisms) AND being morbidly obese for more than half of my life… I pay attention to the scale. I pay attention to my pants. I pay attention to pictures. They are going to tell me all I need to know to not go back and be able to figure out some kind of crazy balance when life is anything but balance. It will forever be like that more or less. So I need to figure this out… Life always lifes hard.
Third… my scale still pulled the freaking mental fire alarm. I saw the highest weight I’ve been in a very, very long time and I was not happy. I hit full on “fight or flight”… “let’s figure this shit out”… “we can’t go back”… spiraling… spinning… chaos. However, because I have my other practices… I was able to give myself a quick come to Jesus moment. And pull the back into exactly what I knew I needed to fix.
But that’s my full work through that happen recently.
Spotting the Fires & Pulling the Alarm
I want to take a moment here to pull back into talking about these dang mental fire alarms. The things that trigger that “fight or flight” in some of us. Send some of us spinning into a full on crazy thought… maybe guilt & shame spiral.
OK… let me roll that back. These fire alarms work. They work well. They are useful. Just not when we’re pulling them all the time because we don’t have other things set up to help us through moments when we think there might possibly be a fire starting somewhere.
And there it is… we need to pull them pretty often when we’re not paying attention to the things that would prevent a fire in the first place.
Hang in there with me…. I’ll explain
The Need of the Fire Alarm
When it comes to our nutrition, fitness, and overall wellness, the issue often isn’t just a lack of willpower or knowledge… it’s that we’re spread too thin.
We get so busy, so overcommitted, that we shift from preventing problems to constantly putting out fires.
There’s career, family, social obligations, daily responsibilities… And next thing we know it… we slip into survival mode.
And sure we’re managing everything well until something starts to slip… or the load gets a little too heavy. Things start to sit on the back burner a little too long. Next thing you know there’s a little bit of smoke coming up. That smoke… it may be for a little bit before we fully notice it. But then, we move from being proactive to reactive.
And then bam… We need to pull the fire alarm again.
That’s when we stop preventing fires and start living like firefighters. We only pay attention to the things that need to be doused with a massive fire hose. And sometimes we spray everything in the vicinity because we realize that one thing has triggered too much intensity with the fire that it’s now pouring into other things.
And then once that’s done, we move to the next area of life because more things need our attention because we just spent our ton of our time and energy dousing down this area with a major hose. And how do we find that thing that we now choose to attack?
By whatever fire alarm is pulled next….
- Maybe it’s stepping on the scale after a long time and feeling shocked.
- Maybe it’s seeing a photo of ourselves and not recognizing the person in it.
- Maybe it’s putting on jeans we haven’t worn in a while and realizing they no longer fit.
- Maybe it’s feeling that hamstring irritation worsening and now we need to go see a physical therapist.
These moments often feel like wake-up calls, but really, they’re signals that are sounding off because we haven’t been able to set up our fire prevention in this particular area. Fire prevention takes time to set up, but once it becomes part of the rhythm and routine of things… it moves smoothly. Almost automatically because we feel so much better with that than we do with the pulling of the fire alarms. And that’s the way the system is supposed to work… but it doesn’t because…
We’re overcommitted.
We’re busy.
Stretched too thin.
We can’t keep going on like this.
Being A Fire Preventer
OK, so maybe you’re about to give me the talk… You don’t have time to set up the prevention. And not for nothing… you might even be really amazing at springing into action when something feels urgent. Maybe you know how to “lock it in”…. start a new diet, hit the gym hard for a few weeks, or commit to a reset. But that response… however strong it seems… often burns out.
Because firefighting is exhausting. And living in a state of constant urgency is unsustainable. Sustainability comes from the fire prevention. It comes from learning how to regularly check in with ourselves… not just when something is on fire.
Just like you might walk through your home and make sure no outlets are overloaded, or check your smoke detectors every few months, this requires ongoing attention in small, manageable ways like by….
- Honoring when your body feels sluggish, sore, or stressed. Maybe you need to check in on your energy levels and sleep quality.
- Paying attention to how your clothes fit, not just how the scale moves. The more progress measurements that you can keep, the better!
- Balancing movement that challenges you with movement that restores you… And adding in some things that are just fun.
- Eating with intention…. not perfection. Is it bringing you some kind of value? If it’s bringing new value, cannot start a fire because it’s giving you something that you need.
- Making space for mental rest and emotional grounding.
This isn’t about fear. It’s about building a foundation that helps prevent the bigger fires.
Takeaway
The fires might still happen because life is freaking unpredictable, but they’re far less likely to burn everything down when you’ve done the slow, consistent work of tending to your inner and outer environment. Maybe it only takes a pot of water to get it out instead of the entire firefighter hose. But the whole house doesn’t need to be repaired after just a pot of water is thrown.
True wellness isn’t found in the massive emergency response…. it’s built in the quiet, daily decisions that help prevent the alarms from needing to be pulled in the first place.
I hope this helps!
With Love, Coach Nik
