Are the scales telling you a big fat lie?

Here is a list of what you should be concerned with losing (hence measuring)

* excess body fat
—

There are so many variables that can mean the scales aren’t telling you the full story

Here are just a few..

1) You have put on muscle

When you increase your protein intake and / or increase or change the amount of exercise you are doing each week, you are likely to gain some lean muscle mass. This particularly happens at the beginning of adopting a new fitness, program or eating protocol.

Eg. If you put ON 2kgs of muscle and lost 2kgs of excess body fat, you will weigh the same number on the scales. But you will be smaller, smaller waist, different physical appearance.
—

2) Holding extra fluid

Eg. hormones , eating salty foods, not drinking enough water, the weather, intolerance to certain types of food.
—

3) Extra fluid held in sore, inflamed muscles (after a hard workout)

If your muscles are sore after a workout , they are inflamed.  This is a good thing . It’s how we get stronger and improve muscle tone..
But
Sore muscles = inflamed muscles = more fluid held in those muscles = more weight on the scales (temporarily)

—

Remember the ONLY thing you want to lose is excess body fat

—

A good guide is that for every 1 cm your waist goes down – you have lost 1kg of body fat. And vice versa.

—

This doesn’t mean that you must throw out your bathroom scales.

The scales can be a good way to measure if you have a large amount of weight to lose (its highly unlikely you will lose 15kgs of fat and put ON 15 kgs of muscle) and you look at your weight going down over an extended period of time.

—

Last note