The scale is a dick huh? Well, that’s what you assume because you’re hyperemotional about it, so perhaps you’re the dick here. Didn’t think I’d turn the tables on you like that so early huh?
Well, if you’ve read my articles before, you know that I can be a dick too, but I digress. The point I’m getting at is that the scale is misunderstood. You think it means something it doesn’t and you place a value on it that it doesn’t deserve. Add in the fact that you marry your self-worth to a certain goal weight and you got a recipe for continual disappointment.
So if you’re sick of feeling like the scale is being a dick to you, let me help clarify things, so you can reconcile your feelings with the scale.
Most research finds weighing yourself is not psychologically harmful (1). Although, these effects can vary quite a bit (2).
Females or people with pre-existing eating disorders are more prone to the psychological negative effects (3,4).
However, weighing yourself as a form of self-monitoring increases your chances of successful weight loss and/or causes you to lose more fat (5,6). So the scale can be a powerful tool, given you understand how to use it.
And although you’re tracking weight, you’re not actually trying to lose weight. You’re trying to lose fat, the squishy tissue that negatively impacts your health and appearance.
So while the scale is useful, it only conveys a small fraction of the story. It doesn’t conclude your fat loss progress, at least not by itself. You’ll need other metrics to track alongside it to determine fat loss or fitness gained.
These metrics can include tape measurements, clothes size, energy levels, pictures, strength performance, and even how you feel.
And while scale weight is not super important, interpreting it correctly is still vital. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how. They see the spike up overnight and immediately conclude they turned into Jabba the Hutt. Then, they give up and binge on a buffet, somehow thinking that’ll make things better.
Fortunately, fat gain is a physiologically slow process (as is fat loss). Thus it is nearly undetectable overnight or even over the course of days on the scale (7).
So if fat mass changes at a snail’s pace, why does your weight spike up as much as 2-3 pounds overnight? Well, you have more mass than simply fat mass silly. Men are typically 60-65% water while women are 50-55% water. (8). Bone mass, muscle mass, organ mass, blood volume, and food weight all fluctuate as well.
Because there are so many things that impact scale fluctuations, you need to stop concluding fat gain the moment you see your weight spike up overnight. Take a moment to divorce your self-worth with overnight scale spikes before reading on. Learn to accept that it’s normal for the scale to fluctuate because uhhh, well, you’re human silly. To help you understand this, let me explain some of the many factors that impact your weight day to day, hour to hour, and even minute to minute.
Carbs have the same energetic effect as fat meaning calorie for calorie, they typically cause the same fat gain/loss in your fat tissue (7). However, people think carbs are more fattening because they can increase your weight in a number of other ways.
Carbs play a role in glycogen storage inside your muscles and liver to provide energy for exercise (9). This storage stores sugar inside your muscles and draws water into your muscle cells which makes them look fuller and allows them to perform well.
Furthermore, fiber is a carb that can sit in your digestive tract longer than other nutrients which also increases scale weight (10). Glycogen storage and fiber intake are generally good things, but fluctuating scale spikes from varying carb intake can make people wrongly conclude fat gain.
Salt doesn’t have an energetic value meaning it possesses no calories on it’s own, so it can’t be stored as fat. However, salt stimulates thirst and retains water.
Chug a couple of gasses of water and your weight will go up. Add in some fries and that water retention can be quite pronounced. To be clear, water retention isn’t a bad thing as it’s not fat gain, so as long as salt and fluid intake are healthy, you don’t anything to worry about.
Just take it with a grain of salt (pun intended) when your weight spikes up after a higher sodium meal.
Lifting weights is highly effective for fat loss. It will impact your weight readings via 3 mechanisms:
So lifting is good even if your weight is temporarily or permanently up (from muscle mass). Here’s my client who lost fat and built muscle of the same amount of mass resulting in no weight change. Isn’t her progress amazing? Now imagine if she had freaked out about the scale not changing and gave up early? She would’ve never made this epic transformation.
Some women can experience quite volatile fluctuations with their menstrual cycle. This is one of the reasons, weight loss can appear much more difficult for women. Keep track of your cycle and compare month to month if your cycle is volatile.
Changing your meal timing or meal composition will impact weight. Some foods are heavier than others or take longer to digest, so they sit in your gut longer (12). This is also why it’s important to weigh in at the same time each day and be aware if you’re constipated.
For example, taking a dump can be the difference between being 2 pounds lighter or heavier. Weighing in fasted after peeing or pooping is the best time to weigh in. Keep in mind, this keeps the readings more consistent, but it doesn’t nullify the fact that your weight will still fluctuate.
Most people drink nowadays. Alcohol can dehydrate you giving you a lower than baseline scale reading even with potential fat gain occurring.
In addition, the dehydration can cause excess water retention in the coming days (13,14,15). This effect changes with the type of drink as well (16).
Experiencing stressful events or inconsistent sleep raises cortisol, the stress hormone that does many things to your physiology, one of which is retaining water (17,18).
Not to mention stress and sleep deprivation increases your cravings and appetite for high fat, high carb, and high sodium foods (19,20,21). So any change in sleep and stress day to day will impact your weight pretty unpredictably.
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Creatine is a popular and highly researched supplement providing lifters and dieters many benefits. It’s mechanism is to draw water into the muscle cells especially during initial use.
This means creatine virgins taking creatine will gain some water weight (22,23). Many other supplements also retain water, so the more supplements you take or the more you change up your supplement routine means higher chances of volatile fluctuations.
So now do you truly grasp that the scale doesn’t mean much? The many forces I mentioned will fluctuate the scale daily. This is not a bad thing, so stop thinking that the scale is being a dick. It’s simply doing it’s job which is to say, “Hey! you’re a freaking normal human who’s weight is supposed to change daily.”
That pound or 2 you gained overnight. Yeah, that’s not fat, it’s likely water, glycogen, food content, and a bunch of other things. Don’t try to figure out where it came from. You won’t be able to.
Just know that to actually gain even 1 pound of fat overnight, you’d have to eat 3500 calories above your maintenance, so don’t flatter yourself. You’re not that good of an eater. For example, if your maintenance intake is 1700 calories, to gain a whole pound of fat overnight, you’d have to eat the following in one day without throwing up:
Scale weight is hard to interpret day to day, but it can still contribute to the long term conclusions of fat loss progress. The key is to look at the overall long term trend or average, not the day to day or even week to week fluctuations.
This is why daily weigh ins are important when you’re attempting fat loss. If you do a once per week weigh in (which is better than nothing), it brings much potential for error.
If the second weekly weigh in is on a stressful or high sodium day, it could appear like you gained fat even though you didn’t.
Contrastingly, if your second weigh in is during a bit more dehydrated or glycogen/food depleted state, it could appear like you lost fat even though you might not have.
So daily weigh ins is best to give you the most data, so you or your coach can draw the best conclusions long term of where the roller coaster is headed. For example, if the scale trends down over the long term, you know you’re losing fat despite daily fluctuations.
Conversely, if the scale trends up unintentionally over long periods of time, you’re no longer dealing with harmless water fluctuations, you’re getting fat.
The scale measures your mass not your body composition, so you shouldn’t tie your self-worth to an arbitrary number influenced by endless factors. Like, did you really need an overly sarcastic article to tell you that?
Well, perhaps you did, so if you found this article helpful, please share with others who keep overthinking their scale fluctuations. You might just save some grey hairs.
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