Separating Your Identity From Your Results

Hey there. I have been thinking a lot about how we decide what we are worth.

For most of my life I tied my value to something external. Something measurable. Something visible. In fitness that was the scale. Body weight. Progress photos. How fast results showed up. If things were moving forward I felt good about myself. If they stalled or went backward I questioned everything. Not just the plan but me.

That mindset did not start with fitness. Fitness just made it louder.

It showed up in work. Job titles. What I was known for. What I could do for other people. If I was productive or useful I felt valuable. If that changed I felt lost. I know a lot of people can relate to that especially if you have been on a weight loss journey for years and have spent most of your adult life believing you needed to fix your body to finally be enough.

The problem with tying your worth to what you do is that life changes.

Bodies change. Jobs change. Roles change. Injuries happen. Priorities shift. Energy levels change. You may lift heavy for years then need to pull back. You may chase fat loss for a decade then realize you want calm more than another transformation phase. When your value is tied to performance or output those moments can feel like failure instead of transition.

I see this all the time in fitness.

Someone commits to lifting. They show up consistently. The scale moves. They feel confident. Then life hits. Stress increases. Sleep drops. Work gets heavy. The scale stalls. All of a sudden their self talk changes. They stop seeing themselves as disciplined. They start seeing themselves as lazy. Nothing about who they are has changed but the metric they tied their worth to did.

That is the trap.

Your value was never meant to be measured by a number or a role or a season.

This is where the inside/out perspective matters. Not as a buzzword. As a way of living. When you learn to separate who you are from what you do everything starts to feel steadier. Fitness becomes something you practice not something you use to prove yourself. Work becomes something you do not something you disappear into. Relationships feel more balanced because you are not chasing validation through effort.

I think about this across the full span of life. We all have a beginning point and an ending point. Everything else is the in between. Along the way we play different roles. Student. Employee. Partner. Parent. Coach. Client. Lifter. Runner. Dieter. Maintainer. Some of those roles last decades. Some only last a few years. None of them define your worth.

Even in fitness. Even after years of trying to change your body.

You were always enough. You just learned to believe otherwise.

That belief is powerful but it can be unlearned. It starts by noticing where you attach value. It continues by choosing to show up for fitness because it supports your life not because it validates it. It deepens when you give yourself permission to evolve without questioning your worth every time something changes.

That is what long term sustainability actually looks like.

Not perfect consistency. Not permanent fat loss. Not never struggling again.

It looks like respecting yourself when goals shift. It looks like adjusting without shame. It looks like understanding that your body is one part of your life not the whole story. When that clicks fitness stops feeling like pressure and starts feeling like support.

If you have been on this journey for years this perspective matters more now than ever. Mid life is not about proving. It is about alignment. It is about building routines that match who you are today not who you were trying to become ten years ago. When you separate your value from outcomes everything gets lighter.

You are allowed to change without losing yourself. You are allowed to slow down without losing progress. You are allowed to be worthy without earning it first.

If you want help building that mindset while still taking action with fitness food and life structure I would love to work with you.

Join The YLF Experience to get individualized guidance grounded in sustainable habits realistic fitness and an inside/out approach that respects who you are right now.