You Can't Always Trust Your Scale

One thing that invariably happens when people start a workout program is that they focus in like a laser on their weight and see that as the only indicator of success. That is the downside of using testimonials. They show that the workouts and nutrition plans work, but they also provide a yardstick for weight loss. Then people think well this person lost x number of pounds, I have not so it does not work for me. Then they quit. Remember what the scale is measuring is NOT JUST FAT. Your weight is a combination of fat, muscle, tissue, bone and water. Now your tissue and bone are not likely to change dramatically when working out but your muscle, fat and water retention will.

You always hear people say muscle weighs more than fat. That is not true. A pound of muscle weighs exactly the same as a pound of fat. Much like a pound of cotton weighs the same as a one pound brick. The difference is the brick takes up much less space than the cotton. The same principle applies to fat and muscle. Muscle takes up less space than fat. It is more dense. When you start working out you are going to be burning fat, but you are also going to put on lean muscle. The fat does not magically transform into muscle though, so it is not likely to be a one-to-one replacement, or even a two-to-one replacement. Meaning you are not guaranteed to drop 2 lbs of fat to every pound of muscle gained. Say for example you take off 15 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle. Well assuming your water level stays the same the net scale change is going to be a five pound loss. But you are going to look (and feel) a lot different with that 5 lb change than you did before. But if you look at nothing but the number you are going to feel like a failure if you wanted to lose 20 lbs.

When you are working out scale weight is a factor, but keep in mind you cannot always trust it. You need to take into account other things like body fat levels, how your clothes are fitting and how you look. That is why taking progress pictures are important. You are not going to be able to see day to day changes looking in the mirror, but if you see a picture of yourself 30 days apart, you will. Lets say however you get 30 days into a program and you do not see any significant change. Your clothes are still tight, and you do not see any definition in your 30 day pictures. Well then it goes back to nutrition. What are you eating and are you eating at a caloric deficit. Everyone's body has a number of calories it can take in to maintain the current weight. Your body is always trying to find that balance. If you eat less than that number (as long as you are eating healthy, balanced meals) you will lose weight. If you eat at or above that number you will not. As you exercise that number is probably going to change. which is why, if you want to see the best results you are probably going to have to track what you eat. There are programs like Diet Power and web sites that will do that and make those calculations for you. Then you just have to make sure you are eating the right number of calories. If however your clothes are getting more and more loose, you see changes in your body in your progress pictures, and feel better, then keep doing what you are doing and don't worry about the scale.

Finally, remember if you are overweight you did not gain all your weight in 60 or 90 days and you may not lose it all in 90 days. Especially if you are very overweight. As you get closer and closer to your ideal weight and ideal level of fitness you are going to lose less on the scale. You may remember Tommy from the one of the P90x infomercials. He went from being obese to ripped, but it took him 5 rounds of P90x to do so. That amounts to 15 months. I don't know him personally, but chances are his weight leveled off at some point and if he had given up he would not have ended up with the results he did. As always if you have questions or comments you can contact me by posting a comment here or through my Beachbody page. Good luck and stay fit.