Reasons Why Your Scale Sucks
I’ve heard a lot of clients tell me about their weight week in and week out, as they should because that’s a data point that I need. That’s all it is though: a data point, not a number to be married to, not something that defines the end all be all of our progress, and certainly not something that defines your worth. I’ve been there myself, it’s a bummer to see that scale stay stagnant or go up! What a lot of people don’t realize is that there are NUMEROUS factors that contribute to what the scale says that have nothing to do with you perfectly adhering to your program or not. In a two-part post, I’m going to cover why the scale may be stagnant or going up and other ways to measure progress.
Why Your Scale Fluctuates
You ate more carbs or salt than usual. Carbs hold onto more water so your body will retain water if you eat more of them. This is not to say that you shouldn’t eat carbs. C’mon, you know me by now, I love my carbs and I love it when my clients eat carbs. It’s just a factor to consider, especially if you eat more carbs because you’re competing, had a refeed day, or maybe you made a choice to go over on carbs but under on fats.
Salt is another factor because salt also holds onto water. If you ate a lot of salty carbs—which is easy to do if you go out to dinner— it makes total sense that you may be holding onto some extra fluid!
You ate later than usual. This one is going to go hand in hand with our next topic but when you eat a later dinner than usual, your body may not have digested your food all the way. This brings us to the next topic…
You haven’t gone to the bathroom yet. Hey, we all do it but if you haven’t been to the bathroom before weighing yourself, you may have a little extra baggage. Get your fiber, drink your coffee, and move on with your day.
You CRUSHED some heavy weights the day before. As part of the recovery process, our muscles retain fluid to help them heal from our workouts. This is especially true if you had a day with a lot of heavy lifting the day before you weigh in. I had a LOT of barbell strength work yesterday and I knew the scale was going to be up a little today because of it. I’m currently on a cut so it was helpful for me to know that beforehand so I didn’t think that I wasn’t making progress.
Hormones. This is mainly for my ladies but your hormones play a huge factor in weight. When it’s that time of the month, your girl has held onto 6 LBS of water! Fun fact, that almost got my rehab stay extended. They thought I dropped 6lbs in a week but it was just water weight from my cycle.
Your sleep is out of wack. When we don’t get enough sleep, our body doesn’t produce as much leptin, which is the hormone that signals satiety. This means that you may have difficulty determining if you’re actually full or not, which can lead to overeating.
Traveling. Show of hands, who’s gotten off of an airplane and felt bloated? If your hand isn’t raised, I have questions. For a variety of reasons, we retain water when we travel. This can be due to food options, odd sleeping times to accommodate our travel schedule, as well as elevation gains when we’re flying. None of these things lead to permanent weight gain.
Weighing yourself at a different time of day or a different day of the week. For an experiment to provide accurate data, it has to be repeatable, right? If you’re weighing yourself at different times of the day during different days of the week, how is that going to give you accurate data? I like to choose two days when I weigh myself and I do it first thing in the morning.
Hopefully, you now have some insight as to why the scale is a good tool to measure progress but it can easily manipulated by a few factors. In the next post, I’m going to cover other ways to measure your progress so that you have a well-rounded picture of your health.