I ate really well and exercised for 3 straight days, stepped on the scale, but nothing happened….
Sound familiar?
For anyone trying to lose weight, it can be tempting to rely on the scale to measure success. After all, the number on the scale is an objective indicator of progress, right? Yes, but also, no. Relying too heavily on the scale so often leads to frustration and often quitting your healthy habits. The number on the scale is a deceiving little thing, leading you to believe you’re not making progress. It often hides the truth.
So let’s talk about what you might be seeing when you step on the scale → water weight, hormone shifts, muscle growth, salt/water retention, etc. (and about a million other things).
This is why when we do check in on our clients, we use our InBody Scanner.
The InBody machine gives a clearer picture of what’s going on inside your body. It is a low cost, non-invasive analysis tool that provides a complete breakdown of your weight in terms of body fat, muscle mass, and water weight. And here are a few reasons why this machine is so important.
- Weight doesn’t equate to health. While BMI is a popular measure of obesity, it’s actually a poor predictor of health. The main reason for this is that BMI doesn’t consider muscle mass or fat distribution. This means that you could have a high BMI but be very healthy or have a low BMI and be at risk for health problems.
- Muscle/Fat gain. While scales can help track weight loss or gain, they don’t provide information about that weight distribution. A scale can tell you that you’ve lost five pounds, but if you’ve lost muscle mass and water weight instead of fat, that may not be as beneficial for your health as you think. In contrast, our Inbody scanner will give you a detailed breakdown of where your weight is coming from – muscle mass, bone density, organ tissue, and yes, even body fat.
- GAINZ. When people think about losing weight, they automatically assume that they need to cut out all the fatty foods and start eating nothing but lean chicken and broccoli. And while that might be a good place to start for a meal or two, it’s not the only way to go about it. You can also focus on building muscle mass, which will help you burn more calories even when you’re sitting still (wup wup!), as muscle is more metabolically active than fat.
The most important end goal here is to find a way to keep going even when the scale isn’t telling you what you want to see. Keep in mind that the scale is very simple. It measures everything, including your bones, muscles, organs, and what you ate or drank before stepping on the scale. It lumps it all together into one number without telling you anything more. Although the scale can be a helpful tool for measuring your weight loss progress, it’s important not to rely on it too much. There are many other ways to track your success – from how your clothes fit to how you feel overall. Instead of fixating on what the scale says, focus on making healthy choices every day and consistent with your workouts.
Remember that health isn’t just the absence of disease or illness; it’s a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. And that requires more than just looking thin or being at a healthy “weight.”