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5 Reasons Why You Can Ditch Your Scale

If fat-burning is your goal, there are better ways to track progress than the scale. Many of us, while working to “lose weight,” gravitate towards the scale to gauge our progress. However, the scale is actually an unreliable tool when it comes to tracking your fat-burning progress.

When we say we want to lose weight, what we typically mean is that we want to lose fat, right?

The scale has virtually no way of distinguishing between fat, bone, muscle, and water. Household scales that claim to track this are staggeringly inaccurate. Let’s ditch the scale and move on.

Here are 5 reasons why you can ditch your scale and find better ways to track your progress:

  1. Water, weight, and fluctuations

    Water content of tissues in the body fluctuates day to day depending on several factors like salt intake; carb intake and inflammatory response to foods that are not well-tolerated by an individual; hormones; and exercise intensity.  In fact, water loss is typically the “weight loss” that people experience in the early stages of their weight loss journey. The body dumps water (via urination) once there is an absence of excess glycogen stores, absence of inflammation, absence of excess carbohydrate intake. 

    In general, a healthy expectation is to lose about 2-3 pounds per week. It is important to burn fat, not muscle. Starvation diets are basically starving the body of important amino acids, the building blocks of protein.

    Adequate nutrition, including the consumption of healthy fats, is key to fat burning.

  2. Glycogen - What’s glycogen got to do with it?

    Glycogen is an energy source that is stored in the liver, and is a very temporary energy source. During heavy cardio exercise for example we tap into our glycogen reserves to fuel our efforts. By the end of an intense cardio workout, we may feel like we are starving and the body immediately seeks out carbohydrates to replenish glycogen stores. 

    By contrast, weight lifting or other weight-bearing exercise at a moderate intensity level tends to burn fat rather than glycogen. Since we are not depleting glycogen, we are not running to the nearest bakery for some bread to replace glycogen. If we tap into other fuel sources besides glycogen, like ketones and our own fat stores, we will lose fat.

  3. Salt of the earth

    While it is true that the more salt we eat, the more water the body retains, this is only partially true. High sodium alone can be tough on the kidneys and can cause water retention throughout the body. However, sodium is an important electrolyte. Anyone who’s lived in the desert will tell you it's not enough to just drink water to stay hydrated, you must also take electrolytes like sodium, potassium and magnesium.

    So how do we get the electrolytes we require for brain function, without getting too much sodium? It’s a simple solution - sodium has a synergistic relationship with the mineral, potassium that will blow your mind!  

    Foods containing potassium can help control blood pressure by blunting the effects of sodium. The more potassium you eat, the more sodium you process out of the body. It also helps relax blood vessel walls, which helps lower blood pressure.

    So no need to ditch salt! Simply balance your sodium intake with foods that are high in potassium, like avocados, plantains, broccoli and mushrooms! (I do not recommend supplementing potassium in pill, powder or liquid form, unless prescribed by your physician.) The safest way to increase potassium is through food intake, or in a balanced blend of the minerals, sodium, magnesium and potassium.

  4. Losing fat, gaining muscle

    Hopefully while you are interested in burning excess fat, you are also working to prevent muscle loss and in fact, gain muscle tissue. We lose an average of The more lean muscle mass we have, the more energy the body requires to maintain that muscle.  20 pounds of fat and 20 pounds of muscle require very different amounts of energy to be maintained. In fact all you have to do is keep eating sugar and carbohydrates to maintain fat!

    One must incorporate some form of consistent weight bearing exercise into the routine ( like Functional Fitness, weight lifting, etc.) to maintain muscle. And prevention of muscle wasting is key to health as we grow older.

    “Muscle mass decreases approximately 3–8% per decade after the age of 30 and this rate of decline is even higher after the age of 60 [4,5]. This involuntary loss of muscle mass, strength, and function is a fundamental cause of and contributor to disability in older people.” (1)

  5. Protect your peace of mind

    An often overlooked reason to ditch the daily scale obsession, is that daily weighing can cause stress, confusion, disappointment, dejection, a sense of failure and many other shaming feelings. Why trust a resource that is not accurately reflecting what is going on in your body?

    For example, if we are gaining muscle, weight will naturally trend up, since muscle weighs more than fat, this can cause confusion.

    A more accurate way to track progress is to notice how your clothes fit over the course of a few weeks. Take weekly progress photos. Weekly tracking of body measurements at key areas like waist and abdomen, can also be effective. Measure strength gains like how many push ups you can do week-to-week.

    Progress can look like a lot of things, not just “weight loss!”

    Most importantly, if we can just be patient and leave the instant gratification behind, we will be amazed at our progress over time.

    As long as the waist/abdominal measurement curve is trending down over the weeks, and you are lifting heavy things (like your own body weight); getting adequate amounts of protein, vegetables and healthy fats; balancing mineral intake with electrolytes; curbing excessive cardio and carbs; you are on the right fat-burning track! 

    Whatever you do, please be kind to yourself and love the body you are in; we only get one.