A Fitness Scale is an Inadequate Way to Judge Your Fitness Progress
Whenever I am in the gym, I see people stand on a fitness scale and then show varying degrees of reaction on their face. Some seem confused and scratch their heads. Some let out a disappointed sigh. Some of them smile and seem genuinely pleased. Sometimes, people even get angry and seem so mad that they could tackle a horse head on!
The Fitness Scale does not discriminate between Weight that is Body fat or Muscle
Think of a fitness scale like you would think of modern art. When you are weighing yourself on the fitness scale, EVERYTHING in your body is being weighed. All your body weight, internal organs, blood, muscle tissue, bone, EVERYTHING is being weighed on the scale.
This is similar to modern art how they seem to take anything and everything laying around on the street and put it together and call it art. Perhaps this is like comparing apples and oranges, but I don’t see how you can take a car tire and dump a bunch of skittles on it and call it art. I saw this once and the person said that, “The skittles represent the individual and the gaps represent how each of us fails to truly connect with those around us, while the car tire represents our longing desire to travel and bridge that gap.” O please!
My point is that you cannot rely on the weight scale for an accurate assessment of your fitness. Your weight is constantly fluctuating and I’ve seen my weight fluctuate up to 6 pounds in a single day. Just because you have lost weight does not mean you have lost body fat. You may have simply worked out intensely and have lost water weight. You may have just eaten a big meal and the added weight is showing up in the food in your stomach.
You could even be gaining weight, but actually be getting healthier! If you are doing resistance training with weights several times a week, you could be putting on lean body mass. This could translate into increased weight on the scale, when in fact you are losing fat and gaining muscle.
So do not get mad at the scale if you are gaining weight! You could likely be in fact gaining muscle if you are diligently working out!
My point is that the scale in the gym that you use to weigh yourself is deceiving you in terms of how healthy and fit you are. Just like taking your B.M.I. (body mass index) or using a tape measure around specific parts of your body to determine how much body fat you have, your weight scale too is not adequate to judge how healthy you are.
The Best and Quickest way to Judge how Healthy and Fit you are
I believe the best way to judge how fit you are is to….
VIEW YOURSELF IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR
That’s it. Just get in front of a mirror and stare straight ahead. This is the quickest, most simple method and I believe it to be quite effective.
Ask yourself some questions:
How do you look?
Do you look slimmer?
What about things like your heart rate and blood pressure, how are they doing?
Have your clothes gotten looser, or tighter? What is your waist size?
Have you gotten more energetic, stronger or more powerful?
Do your muscles look bigger or more toned?
If you have experienced improvements in the things listed above, then you are likely on the correct path to becoming a healthier version of yourself.
Focus on the Fat, not the Scale
If you purely focus on the fitness scale, you are doing yourself a disservice. The scale is deceiving you! Your focus needs to be on losing body fat, not just weight in general!
Blast the Fat with Resistance Training
My focus on losing body fat is why I do resistance training and do cardio rather sparingly in the gym at only 20 minutes. When I do resistance train, I can physically see results in the mirror in terms of looking better and feeling better. Cardio is important for your heart and cardiovascular health, but it does not change your body shape in the way that strength training does.
Muscles are more compact than fat, so although you might not be losing weight on the scale or maybe you are even gaining weight, when you have more muscles, your metabolism is boosted, not to mention you will look better. If you just do cardio at the gym with no resistance training, you are not burning as many calories as you optimally could be. This is because muscles burn more calories than fat and take more energy to maintain. When you have more muscles, you do not need to work as hard to burn calories and maintain a healthy weight.
IN CONCLUSION:
As they say, a picture is worth a Thousand words. If you look at yourself in the mirror and are seeing improvements in the way you look, then that very likely means your fitness program is working for you, so keep at it! If you combine resistance training in your workout with some cardio to blast the fat and combine that with the right nutrition, you will be well on your well to a much healthier and more fulfilling lifestyle.
So ignore the scale, focus on how YOU look!