Fitness blogger's before-and-after pic showing weight gain goes viral

(@mysweatlife/Instagram)

Kelsey Wells, of the fitness blog My Sweat Life, has spent the last year and a half working her ass off doing Kayla Itsines‘ training program. She’s been eating clean and working out on the reg, and it shows—just not on her scale. So the blogger recently took to Instagram to dispel one major myth about weight: Weight and progress aren’t the same thing, so you shouldn’t spend so much time focusing on the number on your scale.

“I figured it was time for a friendly, yet firm reminder,” Wells wrote in her Instagram post. “YOU GUYS. PLEASEEEEEE STOP GETTING HUNG UP ON THE NUMBER ON THE STUPID SCALE! PLEASE STOP THINKING YOUR WEIGHT EQUALS YOUR PROGRESS, AND FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING PLEASE STOP LETTING YOR WEIGHT HAVE ANY EFFECT WHATSOEVER ON YOUR SELF ESTEEM, like I used to.” The blogger posted three photos of herself side-by-side—an image of herself at the beginning of her healthy lifestyle journey at 145 lbs, an in-progress photo of her at 122 lbs, and a recent picture of her at 140 lbs. Though there’s an 18-pound difference between the second and third photos, she appears equally slim in each—just more muscular in the third.

Wells explained that when she started Itsines’ program—just eight weeks after giving birth—her goals weight was 122 pounds. She wanted to fit into her “skinniest jeans” and based her goal off of a self-proclaimed “warped perception.” “Well after a few months of BBG and breastfeeding, I HIT [MY GOAL] and I fit into those size 0 jeans,” she continued. “Well guess what? I HAVE GAINED 18 POUNDS SINCE THEN. EIGHT FREAKING TEEN. Also, I have gone up two pant sizes and as a matter of fact I ripped those skinny jeans wide open just the other week trying to pull them up over my knees.” Wells explained that if she’d stuck with her initial weight-based mentality, she would’ve given up on her journey a long time ago. But she’s since come to measure her progress in other ways, like “strength, ability, endurance, health, and happiness,” and to pay more attention to her body composition than her actual weight.

“I have never had more muscle and less body fat than I do now,” Wells wrote. “I have never been healthier than I am now. I have never been more comfortable in my own skin than I am now…So to the little teeny tiny voice in the back of my head that still said ‘WTF is this—not 140!?’ last week when I stepped on the scale, I say SCREW. YOU. And I think you should probably say the same to your scale too.”