subject: Should You Throw Out The Scale? [print this page] You now know that focusing on fat loss is much more important than focusing on your weight. When you lose body fat, youre making permanent changes in your body, shifting your body composition so that you have less fat and more muscle. When you lose weight, you could be losing water or even muscle. Its impossible to know if youre seeing real results or just the product of your daily habits, hormonal shifts and changing hydration levels.
When you first start a program, you may need extra encouragement to keep going, proof that what youre doing is working and the scale may not give you that. Other ways it can work against you are:
-It measures everything: The number on the scale includes everything - Muscles, fat, bones, organs, fat, food and water. For that reason, your scale weight can be a deceptive number.
-It doesnt reflect the changes happening in your body: If youre doing cardio and strength training, you may build lean muscle tissue at the same time youre losing fat. In that case, the scale may not change even though youre getting leaner and slimmer.
-It doesnt reflect your health: As mentioned above, the scale cant tell the difference between fat and muscle. That means a person can have a low body weight, but still have unhealthy levels of body fat.
-It isnt always a positive motivator: If you step on the scale and youre unhappy with what you see, how does that make you feel? You may question everything youre doing, wondering why you even bother at all. Focusing on weight may overshadow the positive results youre getting such as fat loss, more endurance and higher energy levels.
Change How Your Measure Your Success
Even if youre not ready to stop weighing yourself entirely, using other ways to help you realize that you are making changes, no matter what the scale says.
Go by how your clothes fit. If they fit more loosely, you know youre on the right track.
Take your measurements to see if youre losing inches.
Set performance goals. Instead of worrying about weight loss or fat loss, focus on completing a certain number of workouts each week or competing in a race.
If the scale is making you crazy, taking a break from weighing yourself may just open your eyes to other possibilities. Your weight isnt the only measure of your success. Put away the scale and you may just see how far youve really come.
