Partners gym Progress Dissatisfaction

[nextstep]

Hey everyone! I’m not sure how to start this so basically how do you comfort your partner when they’re sad cause haven’t really made any improvement at their gym?

My husband and I have been hitting the gym seriously these two years. Our gym have one of those professionals body weight/fat/muscle measurement. We are checked every 9 months to see our progress. I was so happy to find out that I’ve made really impressive progress, my body fat decreased by 3% and muscle weight increased by 4%. I was indeed happy for this result as I’ve not been disciplined at all in my program. Ate whatever I want, don’t do cut or bulk, skipping too many sessions whenever I felt lazy.

On the other hand. My husband has been the complete opposite of me. He’s been extremely disciplined, never skipped his session, did cuts and bulks. But his progress was close to nonexistent… he was so devastated when he checked his measurement today. I felt so bad about it too. And I honestly don’t know what to say to comfort him.

But…. I’ve noticed that he’s the “ego lift” kind of guy. He doesn’t really take advice and hates it whenever I brought this topic, that his form is wrong, the weight is too heavy for him, that he should book the coach session to show him how to do certain exercise correctly,…. And so on.

So, how would you deal with this situation? Any input is appreciated. I honestly don’t want to come off as ignorant for celebrating my victory while he’s in his loss

 

[mehr]

@nextstep Those machines are not accurate at all. I’ve been going to the gym 3x a week for the last 4 months weight lifting. In that time I’ve increased my weights substantially, put on about 5-6 lbs in weight and look a lot more muscular. The machine says I’ve lost 2-3lbs of lean muscle mass and gained 4% body fat… no way. I eat well, sleep well, don’t drink alcohol or do any drugs.

 

[nathan2018]

@nextstep First, I would not overly fixate on the results from those scans: Body composition estimates are less useful than you think.

To be clear, that’s how you should interpret the results of those DEXA scans. If DEXA says you lost 14kg of fat and 6kg of lean mass, that actually means you lost somewhere between 10-18kg of fat, and somewhere between 2-10kg of lean mass. In other words, DEXA is telling you that the outcome of your diet was somewhere between “unambiguously good” and “catastrophically bad.”

(DEXA is used as the example here because it is the best commercial method for measuring body comp, other methods generally have even higher errors).

Are his lifts going up? Does he prefer the way he looks in the mirror? Then his progress isn’t nonexistent.

However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. If he’s open to it, the Fitness Wiki is a great resource that demystifies what is needed to make progress and really cuts through a lot of the bullshit. Fat loss is going to primarily come from diet and muscle gain from resistance training with progressive overload.

 

[ivans]

@nathan2018 OP!

This is the correct answer. Please read it. Twice. The wiki linked is also indispensable.