It might seem unsubstantiated that the restroom scale could be your enemy in achieving your weight loss goals but if you’re used to a daily morning weigh-in that leaves you feeling guilty, furious, prevented or demoralized, then it’s worse than enemy – it’s a competent saboteur that stands all set to undercut your fat-fighting achievements.
Those numbers on your bathroom scale commonly inform only half-truths. Think about what happens when you step on the scale. Most of the time, it just delivers the bad news – that you haven’t lost weight or, worse, you’ve gained weight. Your bathroom scale may tell you that you have actually obtained 10 pounds, when in reality you might have shed 5 pounds of muscular tissue and gained 15 pounds of fatty tissue. If that’s happened, the scales give you the illusion that you’re only 10 pounds overweight, when in reality you need to shed 15 pounds of fat. Or, you may have increased 5 pounds of muscular tissue and lost 12 pounds of fat, providing you a net improvement in physical body composition that’s considerably a lot better compared to the bathroom scale is letting you. Or the scale could reveal you are acquiring weight when that weight is all muscle, which really weighs more than fat. Not only are the bathroom scales indifferent to the balance between muscular tissue and fat deposits, they are also unable to differentiate between water weight and fat weight, either.
Among the reported 70 percent of all dieters that routinely analyze themselves by checking in with their bathroom scales, most forget that their body weight reflects an intricate combination of water, muscular tissue, fatty tissue, bone and other tissues. The balance among those elements can differ from hour to hour, daily, even when there’s no fat loss happening. Just what this implies, then, is that there’s no need to evaluate your weight every single day, or every week, for that matter. When you stay on track with a healthy lifestyle, in fact, you may actually gain weight (as measured by the bathroom scale) while decreasing your fat percentage, transforming physical body proportions, improving your health and improving your overall energy.
If you’re a stickler for regular mathematical progress checkins, there’s still some measuring you can do if you still want to, and it’s much more useful than referring to your bathroom scale. Measure your waist, hips, thighs and arms; they’ll all begin to transform as you shed excess fat. Then check the same measurements every month or two for a simple indicator of your development and progress. How your clothes fit is an additional and valid sign of physical body improvement. You might try out a tight set of jeans now, and then put them away for future comparison.
Basically, just keep the bathroom scale out of plain sight for now. You already have sufficient stress in your daily life without an early morning dose of regret, doubt and Monday-morning quarterbacking.