Your Scales Are LYING to you!

Are You A Slave To Your Scales?

1) How often do you weigh yourself?

a) Once a week, if I remember; sometimes less
b) Once a day
c) Several times a day – I just can’t help myself!

2) What do you wear when you weigh yourself?

a) Whatever I happen to be wearing at the time
b) Just my underwear
c) Nothing, I’m as naked as the day I was born – I don’t want ANYTHING to weigh me down, which includes jewellery and watches so those get taken off too!

3) Do you weigh yourself at the same time each time?

a) Nah – as and when I remember
b) Sort of – a couple of hours within the same time, most of the time
c) ABSOLUTELY to the minute! To the same second if possible!

4) How does the number on the scale make you feel?

a) If it’s gone down – GREAT, happy for the rest of the day (fingers crossed it will do the same tomorrow)
b) If it’s the same – a bit disappointed, but at least it’s not gone up!
c) If it’s gone up – VERY unhappy and likely to remain so for the rest of the day! (Gone UP?! How can it have gone up?!! Must make mental note to eat less today and see if it doesn’t go back down tomorrow)

5) What if I tell you, your scales are lying to you and you shouldn’t take what they say as gospel?

a) Seriously?!
b) Are you kidding?!
c) If it’s true I’ll love you forever!
If you answered mainly As then you’re not a slave to your scales; bravo – but read on.
If you answered mainly Bs then you’re skating on thin scale ice most of the time – you read on too.
If you answered mainly Cs – STEP AWAY FROM THE SCALES and most definitely read on!!
 
Right, so your scales are LYING to you. Actually, it’s more a case of you asking them the wrong question, they can only give you one answer, it doesn’t match what you’re really asking so it all goes horribly wrong from there.
Scales weigh things. They’re very good at it but it’s all they can do – add something and the weight will go up, take something away and the weight will go down.
I conducted an experiment about a year ago – I weighed myself every three hours over the course of 15 hours; the scales told me I’d gained two kilos during that time.
Had I REALLY gained two kilos in just 15 hours?  Well, it’s true to say that I was two kilos heavier, but was I two kilos FATTER?  No, I wasn’t.
It makes logical sense that you will be heavier at the end of the day than at the beginning; you’ve eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner during that time, had snacks in between those meals and ingested a fair amount of fluid in the form of water, tea and coffee.
Weighing yourself several times a day is just asking for trouble; it’ll drive you crazy, only make you unhappy and is totally unnecessary. Weighing yourself once a day is just as pointless, you’re still going to get fluctuations from one day to the next.
There are numerous reasons for these ups and downs in scale numbers – these are just some:

• As I’ve already mentioned you WILL weigh more at the end of the day than at the beginning due to eating and drinking throughout the course of the day
• The levels of sodium in your food from one day to the next can have an effect on what the scales say, because it high levels will cause your body to hang on to water
• Pre-menstrual water retention – oh yes, that time of the month and the week, or so, leading up to it can send the scales crazy
• We’re all friends here so I can be frank, right? Paying more than a fleeting visit to the bathroom before you weigh yourself will also make a difference to the scale number. A friend of mine would try and wait for as long as possible to allow for this scale-number-reducing event to take place before she leapt on the scales (each morning), I kid you not!

Before you go and abuse your scales for lying to you, cut yourself, and them, some slack and answer this question:

• What’s more important to you: a certain number on the scales or a certain dress size?

Nine times out of ten the answer is: be a certain dress size; this is good news and a step in the right direction!
Now, answer this question:

• Which weighs more: a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?

You didn’t fall for it did you – you KNOW that a ton of something is going to weigh exactly the same as a ton of something else. So you’ll also know that the much-touted ‘belief’ that muscle weighs more than fat is also wrong – because a pound of fat will weigh exactly the same as a pound of muscle; ask the scales, they’ll tell you 😉
What they can’t tell you is that muscle is more dense than fat so it takes up less space!
I’m a UK dress size 6 (US 2) and I weigh more now than I did a two and a half years ago at a flabby size UK size 10 (US 6) – trying to work that out is almost enough to any scaleaholic’s brain!
As my body fat went down so did my body measurements; as my muscle mass increased so did the number on the scales – watching the scales go UP as my dress size went down took a lot of getting used to, I can tell you; it was like living in the twilight zone for a while!
If I’d been judging my progress using the scales alone I’d have been beside myself! They would have been telling me that despite eating and training properly I was putting ON weight.
I WAS! But it wasn’t because I was getting fatter; it was a direct result of losing body fat, whilst increasing muscle mass, and THAT is a good thing.
It’s not your weight that you really want to know; what you really want to know is whether you’re decreasing your body fat levels and increasing your muscle mass.
“What is my current body composition?” is the question you should be asking and the scales alone can’t tell you that; they will still tell you how much you weigh and that, on its own, is a completely useless fact.
Next time we’ll go through the alternatives, and better methods, you can use to track your progress and keep tabs on your body composition; in the meantime, I challenge you NOT to step on the scales tomorrow morning!
May the not-stepping-on-the-scales-because-I-did-it-this-morning-and-don’t-need-to-do-it-again-and-will-in-fact-be-happier-if-I-don’t Force be with you 😀