Does your scale lie?

Especially now at the beginning of the year, many want to live up to their good intentions and lose weight. Preferably, the weight should go down as quickly as possible.

Most people focus only on the number on the scale when losing weight. But that brings with it a few problems.

For example, water retention due to unusually salty food, a lot of stress, or the menstrual cycle can lead to the fact that the weight does not go down for a while, EVEN THOUGH you have actually lost fat. In this case, the water retention masks the fat loss.

This is not so bad if the water retention lasts only for a short time. This is often not even noticeable if you weigh yourself daily, calculate the weekly average, and then only compare the weekly averages with each other.

However, prolonged water retention can be quite annoying - especially if it lasts for several weeks.

Today we will ignore the issue of water retention and talk about 2 other interesting cases in which you should not only rely on your scale.

For example, if you go on a diet and lose an unexpected amount of weight on average over several weeks, this is not necessarily good. Conversely, if you lose unexpectedly little weight during a diet, lose no weight at all, or (in rare cases) even gain a little weight - despite your diet - that doesn't have to be bad either.

Weight loss and progress

Why is that? If I'm dieting and I haven't lost weight, that means I wasn't in a calorie deficit, right (water retention aside)? Then I haven't made any progress at all, have I? No, it doesn't necessarily mean that.

Let's take a look at two examples. The first example is about unexpectedly high weight loss and the second example is about unexpectedly low weight loss.

Example 1: Unexpectedly high weight loss

First example: You eat about 2000 calories every day and lose an average of 2 lbs per week over several weeks. You wonder why you are losing so much weight. During the last diet you ate exactly the same amount of calories and lost only half the weight.

What could the reason for this be? Has your metabolism improved? Unlikely, even if... it doesn't matter that much.

Does this have anything to do with water retention? Also unlikely, because - as already mentioned at the beginning - this issue usually goes away after a few days and is hardly significant on average (literally, so to speak?).

Are you perhaps simply moving more now? That could be, of course. This way you will consume more calories, be in a higher calorie deficit, and burn more fat.

But what if you don't actually move any more than you did during the last diet? Why are you losing so much more weight now? There must be an explanation for this.

The explanation could be, for example, that you're doing more cardio and less strength training during your current diet, not exercising as hard, or simply switching to a training program that's pretty suboptimal for you - like EMS training.

In addition to or instead of this, it could be that you are eating far too little protein during the current diet and/or are super stressed and sleeping little. All these are points that can cause you to lose muscle mass.

Okay, so the body just takes the calories it needs to survive from muscle instead of fat? Sure, that's not exactly good in terms of your goal to look better, but why is the weight loss so much greater when you lose muscle instead of fat?

This is due to the different caloric density of fat and muscle mass. One pound of pure fat mass has about 3500 cal. One pound of muscle mass, on the other hand, has only about 800 cal. This is just a little over 1/5 of the calories in a pound of fat.

This is super important to know! So the exact numbers aren't that important, of course, but the fact that muscle mass contains far fewer calories than fat mass IS important for us.

Indeed, if your weight on the scale drops by 2 lbs every week because you are losing muscle, then you are in a much smaller calorie deficit than you would be if the weight loss was 2 lbs of fat per week. Or to put it another way:

By the way, this is also the reason why many diets are so popular in certain mainstream magazines. These are often diets where you eat far too little protein and do no or very poorly structured strength training. The result is that your body weight goes down very quickly BECAUSE you are losing muscle.

The falling weight on the scale can be a motivator, of course. It is also widely suggested that a diet works well if you lose a lot of weight - you read and see this narrative everywhere. Unfortunately, high weight loss on its own is a misleading criterion for a good diet.

So if you are UNEXPECTEDLY losing a lot of weight over several weeks, that MAY be a sign that you are losing some serious muscle mass. This is not good.

Now this was the first example, with unexpectedly high weight loss. The second example is about unexpectedly low weight loss.

Example 2: Unexpectedly low weight loss

Second example: You want to lose weight and you are sure that you eat much fewer calories than you consume. You are often hungry and don't feel as energetic as usual. In addition, you can tighten your belt a bit from week to week.

These are all signs that you are actually in a deficit. Nevertheless, the number on the scale does not go down - on the contrary, it has even increased a little bit on average over the last few weeks! That doesn't add up... You were in deficit and yet you gained weight? Why is that?

As in the first example with the unexpectedly high weight loss, this is again due to the fact that muscle mass contains much fewer calories per kg than fat.

For example, you may have lost 6 lbs of fat over the last few months (which is why you can tighten your belt), but you have also gained 8 lbs of muscle mass. Therefore, you have gained 2 lbs in net body weight, although you were in deficit. For those who want to know: This corresponds to a deficit of around 21,000 calories in total.

Now, this is an extreme example, but it can be realistic if you are just starting strength training, are returning from a long time away from training, or are making your training much smarter than it was before.

And with steroids, of course, it can work anyway. Why? Because you then have huge muscle building potential and can even build muscle in a calorie deficit. Numerous studies show that this can work in these cases.

So if you unexpectedly lose little or no weight or even pack on a bit during a diet, you may still be in a calorie deficit.

In this case, you are doing everything right and do not need to reduce calories - unless you want to focus even more on fat loss. But then you must also be aware that you will be even hungrier and you will build less or no more muscle during the diet.

False conclusions

As I said, these were really extreme examples, but they show that you can't always rely on the number on the scale.

If you had relied on the scale in the first example, with the unexpectedly high weight loss, you probably would have concluded that everything was going great. Probably you would have continued with the diet, although it did not go well at all. You would have ended up losing a lot of muscle mass.

If you had relied on the scale in the second example of weight gain - despite dieting - you probably would have concluded that you were on the wrong track.

You probably would have lowered your calories. This would then have led to you being even hungrier and more tired, and would have taken away the potential to continue building muscle during the diet. None of this is good. Just the increase in hunger alone can lead to you losing the desire to continue with the diet and quitting as a result.

So you see that these wrong conclusions can have quite fatal effects. But don't forget that these were two extreme examples.

In most cases, you can rely quite well on the scale and infer the amount of calorie deficit or surplus from the amount of weight loss or gain. Nevertheless, it is better to not rely ONLY on the scale.

For example, it's not a big deal if the weight doesn't come off as quickly as you think it will, as long as you see the changes you want to see in your body. This means that a large part of the weight loss is probably fat mass, and therefore you will preserve your muscle mass well or even become a bit more muscular.

Additional methods

To assess whether you are on the right track, you could - in addition to weighing - use one or more of the following 3 methods, including:

1) Belt tightness in combination with strength values: If you have a lot of fat on your belly, then observe if you can gradually tighten your belt and if your strength values while lifting improve or stay the same. If these things are both true, then you are on the right track.

2) Photos: Compare photos that you take every 2nd week under exactly the same lighting conditions and with the same pose. Is your visible leanness and/or size improving? Great!

3) Body fat percentage: Measure and compare your body fat percentage every week.

A good and fairly simple way to do this is the US Navy method. All you need is your height and your waist, neck, and hip circumferences. You can then simply enter the values into an online calculator once a week and compare them with the values from previous weeks.

If you see that your body fat percentage is decreasing, then you are doing everything right - even if the number on the scale does not develop as you had originally imagined.

So those are 3 methods you can use to gauge if you're on the right track for your goals - regardless of the weight on the scale.