In short: the scale is not your enemy. Weigh yourself.
Howdy. As you probably noticed, I came back from a vacation roughly two weeks ago. And as usually, I stored a couple of kilograms of said holiday on my mid-section. That, gentle-people, I don’t like at all, for three main reasons:
- First, fatty tissue on your waist is generally regarded as quite unhealthy by the modern medicine. At least according to its current understanding. Meaning, it seems to be better to have some chub on your thighs or butt, rather than your tummy.
- Then there are the practical issues. I have freakishly long legs connected to chronically-tight hips. Hence, things like tying my shoelaces require me to bend around my lower back. Which, of course, will be obstructed by a large abdomen.
- Finally, there are the superficial reasons. Call it vain, call it selfish, call it whatever you wish. But: I like my abs. I really, really like them. And right now, they are gone.
In other words, I’m on a short diet again.
The big, scary D-word. (…not THAT! What a dirty mind some people have…)
Where was I? Oh yeah, a diet!
Which finally brings me to today’s main topic:
Scales
The media hates them, nowadays.
By contrast, I love them.
And you should too.
Here’s why.
Should you even use one?
Some people even go so far as to say you shouldn’t weigh yourself at all. Their reasoning is something along the lines muscle tissue weighs more than fat yada yada gabba gabba I need more clicks.
Please, take my word on this: this is a load of utter bullshit.
Yes, muscle tissue is denser that fat tissue is. And yes, it is possible for two persons to have wildly differing body compositions at the same weight and height. Heck, it’s even possible for a single person, given enough time.
But that there is the critical conditioner – time.
Unless you are a talented beginner only starting out physical training – or are on a horse-load of steroids and still have some talent – muscle mass grows painfully slowly.
Over medium time-frames (weeks to some months), your scale weight will strongly correlate to your level of body fat.
Weight going down? Congrats, you’re getting leaner.
Going up? You’re piling on some fat. Maybe a bit of muscle too if your work out, but still: also fat.
So, if you want to have any idea about how fat exactly your sorry ass is – please step on the scale.
Only be stupid once a week
Now, we have clearly established that not weighing yourself at all is stupid beyond reason.
Unfortunately, stupidity endeth not here.
Indeed, the advice to ditch the scale is fortunately rare.
What is not rare, however, is the advice to utilize said scale only once a week.
You know, because body weight fluctuates.
…
Now please excuse for a moment while I lose all my hope in humanity.
Basics of measurements
Phew, made it.
Okay, I’d like to think that most of the readers of my blog have at least some formal education, and have at least a coarse understanding of how the world works.
And now, the main thing to understand is that our body weight is a noisy signal.
It does indeed fluctuate, easily by one kilogram a day to either direction. Maybe two, if your intake of fluids is inconsistent, or you like to poop like your life depends on it.
But for some incomprehensible reason, this noisiness is used to justify weighing yourself less often. How is that supposed to make any sense?
You deal with a noisy signal by taking more measurements, not fewer.
Why the common advice sucks
Let’s see what happens if you actually follow this moronic advice.
You start a diet, and weigh yourself on the first morning. Only, you happen to be drier than usual. Slightly dehydrated, that is. Maybe you didn’t drink anything the night before, and had a really sweaty night for whatever reason. Your weight is down by 1 kg from its short-term average.
For one week, you diligently diet with a 500 kcal daily deficit, losing half a kilogram of mostly-fat in the process.
But alas, for the 7th-day dinner you have something salty, and a nice load of fibrous, intestinal-bulk-forming vegetables. You even wake up thirsty in the middle of the night and have large glass of water. These together bring your non-fatty weight temporarily up by 1.5 kg for the next morning’s weigh-in.
You can guess what happens.
In reality, you have lost 0.5 kg of fat. According to the scale, you have gained two.
Now this is nice surprise, isn’t it? Feel really motivated to continue your diet? Ready to tolerate another seven days of slight hunger before your next weigh-in?
Didn’t think so.
What to do instead
After that clusterfuck, let’s see what happens when you decide not to be an idiot. You decide to be an awesome badass instead.
You again embark on the diet, and again weigh yourself the first morning. Again get that number that’s actually off by 1 kg down.
But this time, you weigh yourself again the next morning. You’ve probably lost some tens of grams of fat yeah. But, you’ve also rehydrated, and your fluid-weight is back to the baseline.
The scale will be up by almost 1 kg. You have a functioning brain, and quickly realize it’s impossible to gain that much fat in one day. Yeah the number is a bit depressing, but you shrug it off as a random fluctuation. As you should.
Indeed, the next few days the scale will start slowly creeping down, ending up at minus 400 g on the seventh day. You have those salty veggies on that night.
Then comes the first day of the second week. You are again bloated as hell, and your weight is up the same 1.5 kg as it was in the moron-example.
Now you definitely know you cannot have gained that ridiculous amount of fat in one day. You laugh the number off, and watch it return to its nice downward creep within the next three days or so.
You are happy and through with your diet in exactly the estimated time.
Track and load
Hope you understand my point by now. Be on a diet, use the freaking scale. Simple as that.
Of course, things are usually a tad more complicated in practice. You’re likely to see some noise also on the measurements between days 1 and 8.
So, here’s what I recommend in addition.
Track your weight in an Excel file (or OpenOffice), and calculate a 7-day running average. That is, for each day compute the average weight of that day, plus the preceding 6.
After maybe one week, one-and-a-half-tops, those averages will form a very nice and smooth downward line.
They are much easier to read than the raw day-by-day data. That, you should only use to ignore any obvious outliers, like that 1.5 kg upward bump in the example. Those will throw of your averages for the next seven days.
May the macros be ever in your favor.
-Antti, out!
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