Mar
3rd

One of my pet peeves: people who are obsessed with the scale and weigh themselves after each gym session. Or those people who weigh themselves multiple times throughout the day and wonder why they are getting a different result each time.

[Skip to the bottom if you'd like to get straight to the point]

YOUR BODY WEIGHT SHOULDN’T MATTER! The only thing that matters is your body composition and how much fat you have in comparison to muscle a.k.a. body fat percentage.

You don’t want to lose weight.
You want to lose FAT.

I’m walking evidence of this. I’m the exact same weight as I was when I was in tip top shape (at various points last year) but my body LOOKS and FEEL completely different than it did then. Why?

I use to do intense workouts 5x/week, ate “real” foods 75% of the time with lots of lean protein but since December, my training has slacked a little and a lot of fatty and processed foods have snuck into my diet thus increasing my body fat percentage. My workouts (not so much the 5x anymore!) are still keeping my weight down but the things I’m putting in my body is totally changing the composition.

Yet I still weigh the same…

The only difference is that parts of my body which use to be lean and tight is now soft and squishy; a layer of fat that has happily moved in and covered everything! When that happens, your body will look completely different as to when it is lean. No, this isn’t psychological paranoia (another subject which deserves it’s own entry) but I know because my jeans are tighter and my energy levels have dropped considerably.

So I wish people would put away those scales and stop obsessing over their weight! It’s just a number and doesn’t give you true results. I weigh myself maybe once a month— or none at all. Okay, I admit, when I started this whole fitness regime, I was too lazy to weigh myself anyway because my scale was tucked in the back of my bathroom cupboard and getting on one meant I had to dig it out, strip and take off my shoes. So much unnecessary work for nothing!! Good thing I never relied on it.

A better way to track progress is through body measurements and I’m usually too lazy to take time to do that too so I don’t track progress at all— I know how my body is progressing already by the way it looks and how my clothes fit. It’s really that simple.

When you bring scales and measuring tapes into play, all you’re doing is increasing your stress levels, making it harder to reach your fitness goals. You may eventually need to weigh yourself but you shouldn’t be obsessing over it.

I know many types of people and personalities exist so my personal opinions and advice may not be aligned with yours. I realize that for some, taking regular measurements to track and record progress may improve fat loss and maintenance so if you do choose to, here are some tips:

• Consistency is the key. Weigh yourself at the same time and place everyday.
• The best time to weigh yourself is right when you wake up, before you go to the washroom with no clothes on. Do this regularly (see point below) to get the most accurate results.
• Weigh yourself as little as possible: weekly < bi-weekly < monthly…
• Your weight fluctuates daily due to many conditions: pre/post workout, fed/fasted, morning/night, bladder full/empty, amount of fluids ingested, etc.
• The number on the scale maybe off depending on the quality of the scale.

If you didn’t want to read that long entry, here is my concluding thought:

If you are susceptible to obsessive behavior and paranoia, beware of the scale!!

*And just for the record, I’m not being one of those annoying girls complaining that I’m fat and I gained weight. I know I’m not fat, I just wanted to point out that I’m not as FIT as I was a couple months ago. I’m not complaining either because nothing excites me more than reaching for my next goal!

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