If you just can’t bring yourself to toss the scale in the trash, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the factors that influence its readings. From water retention to glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, daily weight fluctuations are normal. They are not indicators of your success or failure.
Once you understand how these mechanisms work, you can free yourself from the daily battle with the bathroom scale.
Two factors influencing water retention are consumption and sodium intake.
Strange as it sounds, the less water you drink, the more of it your body retains. If you’re even slightly dehydrated, your body will hang onto its water supplies with a vengeance, possibly causing the number on the scale to inch upward. The solution is to drink plenty of water, but not to extremes.
Excess sodium can also play a big role in water retention. A single teaspoon of salt contains over 2,000 milligrams of sodium. Generally, we should only have between 1,000 and 3,000 milligrams of sodium a day, so it’s easy to go overboard.
Sodium is a sneaky substance. You would expect it to be most highly concentrated in salty chips, nuts, and crackers. However, a food doesn’t have to taste salty to be loaded with sodium. Half a cup of instant pudding contains nearly four times as much sodium as an ounce of salted nuts, 460 milligrams in the pudding vs. 123 milligrams in the nuts.
The more highly processed a food is, the more likely it is to have a high sodium content. That’s why, when it comes to eating, it’s wise to stick mainly to the basics: fruits, vegetables, lean meat, beans and whole grains.
Another factor that can influence the scale is glycogen.
Think of glycogen as a fuel tank full of stored carbohydrates. Some glycogen is stored in the liver and some is stored the muscles themselves. This energy reserve weighs more than a pound, and it’s packaged with 3 to 4 pounds of water when it’s stored.
Your glycogen supply will shrink during the day if you fail to take in enough carbohydrates. As the glycogen supply shrinks you will experience a small imperceptible increase in appetite and your body will restore this fuel reserve along with it’s associated water.
It’s normal to experience glycogen and water weight shifts of up to 2 pounds per day even with no changes in your calorie intake or activity level.
Otherwise rational people also tend to forget about the actual weight of the food they eat. For this reason, it’s wise to weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you’ve had anything to eat or drink.
Swallowing a bunch of food before you step on the scale is no different than putting a bunch of rocks in your pocket. The 5 pounds that you gain right after a huge dinner is not fat. It’s the actual weight of everything you’ve had to eat and drink. The added weight of the meal will be gone several hours later when you’ve finished digesting it.
Exercise physiologists tell us that in order to store 1 pound of fat, you need to eat 3,500 calories more than your body is able to burn. In other words, to actually store the above dinner as 5 pounds of fat, it would have to contain a whopping 17,500 calories. This is not likely, in fact it’s not humanly possible. So when the scale goes up 3 or 4 pounds overnight, rest easy, it’s likely to be water, glycogen and the weight of your dinner.
Keep in mind that the 3,500 calorie rule also works in reverse. In order to lose 1 pound of fat you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in.
Generally, it’s only possible to lose 1 to 2 pounds of fat per week. When you follow a very low-calorie diet that causes your weight to drop 10 pounds in seven days, it’s physically impossible for all of that to be fat. What you’re really losing is water, glycogen and muscle.
This brings us to the scale’s sneakiest attribute: It doesn’t just weigh fat - it weighs muscle, bone, water, internal organs and all.
When you lose weight, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve lost fat, and losing muscle is nothing to celebrate.
Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. In other words, the more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns, even when you’re just sitting around. That’s one reason why a fit person is able to eat more food than the fad dieter who is unwittingly destroying muscle tissue. The fit person’s muscle is using the food for fuel. The better the fuel you put into your body - by eating nutritious foods, for example - the better it runs.
Compare fat and muscle (lean tissue) to feathers and gold: 1 pound of fat is like a big lumpy bunch of feathers, while 1 pound of muscle is small and valuable like a piece of gold. Obviously, you want to lose the dumpy, bulky feathers and keep the sleek beautiful gold.
The problem with the scale is that it doesn’t differentiate between the two. It can’t tell you how much of your total body weight is lean tissue and how much is fat. There are several other measuring techniques that can accomplish this, although they vary in convenience, accuracy and cost. Skin-fold calipers pinch and measure fat folds at various locations on the body, hydrostatic (or underwater) weighing involves exhaling all of the air from your lungs before being lowered into a tank of water, and bioelectrical impedance measures the degree to which your body fat impedes a mild electrical current.
If the thought of being pinched, dunked or gently zapped just doesn’t appeal to you, don’t worry. The best measurement tool for overall general fitness is your very own eyes. How do you look? How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Do your muscles feel firmer?
If you are exercising and eating right, don’t be discouraged by a small gain on the scale. Remember, muscle weighs more than fat. And fluctuations are perfectly normal. Expect them to happen and take them in stride. It’s a matter of mind over scale.
The ultimate key to fat burning and weight loss is to think long term. Eat a low-fat, balanced diet, exercise and be active every day. Commit to this lifestyle change, and realize there will be bumps in the road. And remember: You have your Shape Up Montana team members to help you get back on track.
Together, we can all change the shape of our state.
Editor’s note: Shape Up Montana is a team wellness program that encourages Montanans to develop healthy physical activity and eating habits and runs through May 1. For more information or to register, go to www.shapeupmontana.org.
Suzie Eades Wood, a National Strength and Conditioning Association-certified personal trainer, is operations director of the Big Sky State Games, which runs the Shape Up Montana program.
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