The only thing that can come from using only the scale to determine if your exercise program is working is "Bad News".
If you really want to know if your fitness / fat loss program is working you need more tools. The scale simply will not give you the true answer to the question, "Am I gaining muscle and losing fat?"
What Can the Weight Scale Tell You?
Your body is made up of about 60-65 percent water.
A 160 lb. person contains about 100 lbs. of water. That water goes in and out of cells, muscle and organs, depending on many factors.
Judging by the weight registered on the scale, you cannot tell whether you’re gaining or losing fat, or gaining and losing muscle.
But with a little education and a couple of simple tools, you can be well on your way to monitoring the success of your program. Within minutes you will be able to deduce what is working and what is not working to get you closer to your fitness goals.
Then, do the things that work, and stop doing the things that don’t work. It’s as simple as that.
While some of these seem to be common sense, I have found that we are very emotional when it comes to fitness and fat loss. By working one on one with over 700 clients in the last eight years, I have found that most of my clients loose their common sense when it comes to their body fat level.
Below are only a few of the many reasons why your weight could be fluctuating on the scale:
Certain times of the month for women
Consuming more sodium in your diet than normal the day before
Overeating with a different type of carb than you usually eat
Drinking more water than normal
Sweating more, temperature change, altitude, etc.
My point is that your body weight fluctuates for so many reasons, you can't easily determine what is causing it.
Three Tools to Determine the Effectiveness of Your Weight Loss Program
Three ways that are far better than just using the scale to see if your fitness program is working are:
The fit of your clothes.
If your pants are looser around the waist and you have more room in your clothes, then you are more than likely losing fat. (Just make sure you do not shrink-wash your jeans so they fit tighter. Just like everything else you have to keep all things the same, so you’re comparing apples to apples.)
Use both a cloth tape and a scale.
The waistline measurement and the scale give you a better feedback than the scale alone. If the scale stays the same and the waist measurement goes down, then you are losing fat and gaining muscle.
If the scale stays the same and the waist measurement goes up, then you are gaining fat.
A one site skin fold caliper kit.
They’re very easy to use and very affordable. To find a kit, google search “one site skin fold caliper kit”. The feedback is much more precise than the other methods above.
Within 1 minute you can calculate 3 important numbers that will tell you if you’re losing, gaining, or maintaining muscle and/or fat:
Overall body fat percentage
Fat weight
Lean Body Mass
Monitor Your Progress and Keep Making Adjustments Until You Succeed
Using any one of these techniques will help you determine what works and what doesn’t when you’re trying to gain muscle and lose fat.
Monitoring my progress with a tape measure and a one site skin fold caliper kit for the last 25 years has allowed me to figure out what works for my body. Because what works for me will be slightly different than what works for you.
To get in great shape you have to become your own personal trainer and make small adjustments to food intake, resistance training, cardio routine, goal setting, etc, as needed, until you find the right balance and combination that works for you.
I suggest that you only change one aspect of your fitness / fat loss program and keep everything else the same for two weeks. By utilizing the monitoring techniques I mentioned above you can start to learn more about what works for you and what doesn’t.
Remember, anyone and everyone has the power to change!
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