Why Your Weighing Scale Is A Big Fat Liar

Many of us have an unhealthy obsession with body weight. Most of us put a lot of emphasis on how much we weigh. We either choose that we need to lose or gain weight so we automatically make the weighing scale our default tool for measuring progress. We need to pay more attention to body composition thru knowing your ideal body fat percentage. I will tell you why the weighing scale is unreliable for tracking your fitness goals.

Water Weight

Your body is basically composed of approximately 60% water. You could actually sweat out some small amount of weight thru vigorous exercise or sitting thru a particularly hot sauna. Drink a few gallons of water after that supposed weight loss and you will gain it back. Any sport (Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Powerlifting, Bodybuilding) where an athlete's weight gives him a significant advantage over his opponent knows weight loss techniques by purely dehydrating themselves for a specific weight division. They easily gain that weight back on or after the event. Many diet plans cause you to lose the initial water weight but it does not mean you are going to sustain that weight loss.

Muscle Gain

Purely looking at the weighing scale means you don't take into account that you can gain muscle. Lets say weight loss is your goal, you go through an intense exercise program for about a month, you step on the weighing scale and see that the weighing scale has not moved. Wow, all that work and no progress, I should just quit, right? Wrong, for all you know you lost 5 pounds of fat and gained 5 pounds of muscle. That would qualify as a success in any fitness world. On the looks department, 5 pounds of muscle on your body looks a lot better than 5 pounds of fat. I bet when you are skinny and you are talking about wanting to gain weight I'd say you want that to be mostly muscle and not fat.

Fat Loss

When you talk about losing weight I'm pretty sure you are hoping that all of that weight is from fat. Losing 5 pounds of fat from your hips or your tummy goes a look way towards improving your appearance. Getting rid of excess fat also helps you improve your chances towards better health by preventing heart disease, diabetes and hypertension.

To summarize, we should not rely on the weighing scale and absolute bodyweight as a marker of progress. Indiscriminate weight loss or gain is counterproductive because the body is composed of water, muscle and fat. Improving your health and body composition by determining your ideal body fat percentage is a great start to overall health and appearance.

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