Should You Throw Out the Scale?

When it comes to weight loss, that number on the scale seems to hold a lot of power. If it’s not budging, frustration might set in. But sometimes the number on the scale isn’t the best way to measure progress. If you’re losing inches, but not weight, with your diet and exercise program, you’re losing fat and gaining muscle, which is a good thing.

When you lose weight, you could be losing water or even muscle. It’s impossible to know if you’re seeing real results or just the product of your daily habits, hormonal shifts, and changing hydration levels.

When you first start a your workouts or normal walking, you may need extra encouragement to keep going, proof that what you’re doing is working and the scale may not give you that.

How The Scale Lies

• 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 doesn’t reflect the changes happening in your body: If you’re doing cardio and strength training, you may build lean muscle tissue at the same time you’re losing fat. In that case, the scale may not change even though you’re getting leaner and slimmer.
• It doesn’t reflect your health: As mentioned above, the scale can’t 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 isn’t always a positive motivator: If you step on the scale and you’re unhappy with what you see, how does that make you feel? You may question everything you’re doing, wondering why you even bother at all. Focusing on weight may overshadow the positive results you’re getting such as fat loss, more endurance, and higher energy levels.

Change How You Measure Your Success

Even if you’re not ready to stop weighing yourself entirely, using other ways to measure progress can keep you motivated and 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 you’re on the right track
• Take your measurements to see if you’re losing inches
• Get your body fat tested or use an online calculator
• 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 isn’t the only measure of your success. Put away the scale and you may just see how far you’ve really come.