Your scale only tells half the story
Weight fluctuates by a kilo or more a day. If you also track your circumferences, photos and records, you see what’s really changing.
The scale is the best-known measuring tool for anyone working on their body. And it’s the tool that most often discourages people. Not because it lies, but because it only measures one thing.
Weight fluctuates. Fluid, salt, what’s in your gut and your hormones make your weight differ by a kilo or more from day to day. That’s not fat coming or going. If you weigh yourself every day and draw conclusions every day, you’re mostly drawing conclusions about your dinner.
Weigh yourself at a fixed moment. In the morning, after the toilet, before breakfast. And look at the trend over weeks, not at today’s number.
Circumferences are more stable. A waist that gets two centimetres smaller while the scale stands still is exactly what happens when you lose fat and build muscle. If you’re aiming for fat loss, your waist tells you more than your weight.
Photos see what you miss. You see yourself every day, and that’s why you don’t see the difference. A photo from eight weeks ago next to one from today does show it. Take them every two to four weeks, in the same place and in the same light.
Records don’t lie. If you lift more than three months ago, or run your usual loop faster, you’ve made progress. Even if the scale shows nothing.
How you feel counts too. Sleep, energy, stress: in the app you track them as a score from one to ten. That trend sometimes says more about whether you’re on the right track than any other number.
Choose what you track. Not everyone wants to weigh themselves, and you don’t have to. Turn on what helps you, and leave the rest off.
