Wow…this is such a major, big topic and has so much influence on people that it has been known to steal the joy out of whole days in some folks lives. Incredible that an inanimate object that records numbers that represent our personal weight can have such an impact on our lives. How did this happen? Where did this start? More importantly when will it end…this insane focus on the numbers on “The SCALE”. What are those numbers and what do they represent for us?

With a little bit of research I discovered that scales have been around for thousands of years but the act of weighing ourselves came about in the United States in the early 1900’s and became extremely popular during the Great Depression with coin operated scales used as big money makers. By the 1940’s our love affair with scales was in full force when bathroom scales became regular household items.

From then until now our fixation with the numbers on the scale has only intensified to the point that some people will do darn near anything to get those numbers to go down. As evidenced by surgeries and drugs and other unnatural ways to drop weight. So what exactly does that number on the scale represent? Maybe to some people it represents who they are socially or economically but really the numbers on the scale are simply YOU. Your bones, muscles, organs and bodyfat. That’s it… just all the parts that make up the physical being of YOU. And your saying…”Is that it? Bodyweight is just my organs, muscles, bones and bodyfat? Then why do I lose my mind over the numbers on the scale everyday and sometimes many times a day?” Maybe you give those numbers on the scale a little too much power over you, your life, your moods, your days… and that is just not healthy. So stop doing it.

Stop focusing on your scale weight as the means to some end that you may not even be aware your using for an ends. How often have you thought.”If only I looked like her/him? Was as small as them? Could fit into a size 2? If only I could lose 15-20lbs I would be so happy!” Is that you? You are looking for an ends to make you fullfilled, happy or just different than the person you are right now. The scale is NOT going to do that for you…but I think you already know that. And that is definitely a topic for another post.

So with that in mind back to the subject at hand. Do you get upset when you don’t lose the weight on the scale that you feel you should lose because you’ve PUT IN SO MUCH EXERCISE and good eating that that scale had BETTER be lower this week? If so…welcome to my world. This has got to be the number one discourager for most of our clients. They weigh themselves..which we advise against up to a point, and of course the number on the scale is never as good as they think it should be from all the time and energy they put in for the week and they say…”WHY do I even try? What is the point? This isn’t working…and on and on it goes. I call it the process of talking yourself out of getting fit and healthy. Getting fit and healthy actually takes time and evergy that hopefully will extend throughout your life so who cares if you stayed the same weight this week. You goose egged on “The Scale”! It didn’t move at all or worse yet you put a pound on! YIKES! It might feel like the end of the world but it is not.

In fitness the best way to measure your success with getting healthy and fit is NOT “The Scale” but by bodyfat measurement. When you get your bodyfat measured it is measuring your Lean body mass versus you Fat. It will tell you how much of your weight is purely fat and from there you can determine how healthy or unhealthy you are becoming. Most people trying to get fit start to weight train and do cardio and lots of changes occurr in your body from these efforts. With the best change being putting muscle on and therefore lighting up your metabolism.

Always when a person comes into our studio to lose weight before anything else we figure out where they are right now. We do this several ways with one of those ways by doing their bodyfat analysis. We want to know how much Lean Body Mass(LBM) versus bodyfat(BF) they are carrying around. There are several ways to measure bodyfat with most having a small margin of error. The important thing is to get it measured regularly and to use those results as a gauge to determine if you are losing fat and/or putting muscle on. So when someone walks into our studio and says “I want to lose 70lbs.” they are probably referring to scale weight but we will in turn determine their bodyfat and propose for them to shoot to lose such and such amount of bodyfat and also put on such and such amount of muscle.

It is important to remember that muscle weights 21/2 times fat. So when you start weight training you WILL put some muscle on and hopefully also lose weight so initially there may be no change on the scale, in fact you might even gain weight on the scale. And your like “Holy Cow” but I came in to lose weight….and yes you did. But if your are weight training you will have put muscle on so on “The Scale” it might appear as if you have actually gained weight but instead what probably happened is that you put muscle AND dropped bodyfat. That can be answered with a bodyfat ananlysis. So make sure you get your bodyfat measured and try to use that as your measurement tool instead of just “The Scale” to determine if you are heading in the direction you want to go. For most of us that direction is losing bodyfat.

Remember that Rome was not build in a day nor did God make our world in one day so please, have reasonable expectations for your fat lose. Assume it will take you as long to lose the fat as it took to put it on. Good luck and know that it can be done. All great endeavors take time and isn’t your health and fitness worth it?

God Bless You,
Evey

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 11:41 am and is filed under Evey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.