Why the Scale is a Bad Indicator of Dieting Success

When people begin a program to start loosing weight they usually do not think about the different tools that are available to help them make an accurate judgment on their weight loss progress. Most people’s decision on whether or not their diet program is successful is solely based on the readings from the scale. Now don’t get me wrong, the scale will give you an accurate reading on how much “weight” you have loss but it does not accurately tell you how much body fat you have lost. For example, what if most of the weight you lost was water weight? Your water weight can easily fluctuate within a few pounds every day depending on your activity levels, water consumption and diet. Even worse, what if you have lost muscle weight? If you eat too few of calories on your diet or exercise improperly you do stand a chance of burning up muscle.

I understand that in our culture we associate ones weight with their overall health but the real goal should be fat reduction not just weight reduction. Lets use an example of someone that has lost 10 pounds in one week to get a better understanding of why weight loss alone is not a good method for tracking fat reduction. In our example, lets assume that our imaginary person is on a 1500 calorie a day diet. So in one weeks time our imaginary friend has consumed 10500 calories (1500 calories x 7 days in the week). It takes around 3500 calories to burn one pound of body fat, so for our imaginary friend to lose one pound of fat a week he would need to burn an additional 500 calories a day. Now if we assume that our friend lost 10 pounds then that means he had burned an additional 35000 calories that week (or 5000 calories a day). It is unrealistic to assume that the person in our examples weight loss is from fat loss alone. In our example our friend must have also lost additional weight to either water loss or possibly even loss of muscle. Now a lot of people will lose water weight when they start a new diet program and change the way they eat but loosing muscle weight should always be avoided. The more muscle you have the more calories your body is going to burn so we definitely want to maintain the muscle that we currently have.

So, if the scale alone is a bad idea for judging fat lost then what should we use? There are a variety of different types of body fat monitors that will help you make a better judgment on your actual fat loss. There are body fat scales that not only track your body weight but can also be used to track your estimated body fat percentage. If you are not interested in replacing your scale, you could also use a handheld body fat analyzer or calipers to calculate your body fat percentage. The body fat scales and analyzers are easy to use but considerations need to be taken on when you do your readings. Since a persons body weight and temperature changes throughout the day you will want to be consistent on when and where you take your readings. Also, calipers provide good results too but do require an additional person to get all of the readings.

Now keep in mind that all the body fat monitors provide and estimated calculation on where your body fat percentage is. None of them are 100% accurate but they will give you a good indication on how much body fat you really are loosing. The key point is that for a relatively inexpensive price you can quit guessing and start getting a better understanding for your fat reduction success.

Gerald is the owner of One4Fitness.com For more information on Body Fat Monitors visit One4Fitness at http://www.one4fitness.com.

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