Using Your Scale: Look for the Trend

How to liberate yourself from the anxiety of stepping on.

Jan 11, 2023

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I will never forget hearing the soft “clunk” of the heavy metal square on my childhood doctor’s office scale as it was moved more and more to the right. Or even worse, the nurse would shift the smaller upper slider all the way over, expecting it to calibrate — and yet, she would have to slide it all the way back, and then move the larger one (again) .. “clunk.”

It’s safe to say my relationship with the scale had a rocky start. I was a big kid growing up: I didn’t play sports and was bigger than all my friends — a quiet but “always a pleasure to have in class” kid. I loved school and studying but always struggled with going to the doctor’s office and stepping onto the scale. It was like taking a test I knew I was going to fail.

The relationships we build with people in our early years tend to form the foundations of our relationships in our adult lives. It’s no different with the scale and our relationships with our weight. And the messages supporting that turbulent relationship are no accident — it’s a marketing tactic.

In this Global Wellness Institute report, the 2020 global wellness industry was valued at $4.4 trillion and is projected to grow to a staggering $7 trillion by 2025. There are people who make very lucrative careers from sales of the latest products, programs and supplements. And most of the messaging can be boiled down to a simple line: Gaining weight is bad and losing weight is good.

We’ve been conditioned in so many ways to believe that if our weight goes up, even a little, we have somehow failed. Every increase somehow reflects that we haven’t worked hard enough.. that we don’t have enough willpower.. that something is wrong.

Please — right now — understand that is not true. And even more importantly: your worth, determination, work ethic can never be defined by a reading on what is a glorified calculator, okay?

If your relationship with your bathroom scale rests in a binary: If I’m at [x] weight I’ll have a good day. If I’m not, I’ll have a bad day — the way to overcome this intense anxiety is not to avoid the scale.

The way out is to use the scale more often.

*note: before moving on, I must acknowledge that if you have a history of health conditions linked with ED/severe body dysmorphia and using a scale is not best for your well-being — absolutely prioritize what makes you feel safe, happy and healthy.

How to Use the Scale as a Tool:

The first thing you have to understand when using your scale is this:

In order to gain fat, we have to eat an excess of calories — known as a calorie surplus.

For example, you see your weight spike 3 pounds in one day: in order for that to be from fat storage of excess calories, you would need to consume 10,500 extra calories in one day.

For reference, that would be the equivalent of:

4 large pizzas (not slices — the entire thing) or
19 Big Macs or
37 6-piece chicken McNuggets or
77 scoops of vanilla ice cream

Most of us couldn’t eat that much food in one day, so why do we automatically associate an increase in weight with an increase in fat? Because that’s what we’ve been told: if the scale goes up, it must be fat.

But that’s not true.

Weight gain does not always equal fat gain.

Read that again.

There are so many reasons the scale can go up other than fat gain:

Increased salt intake: the body retains more water
Increased carb intake: similar to salt intake — more water retention
A hard workout: muscle inflammation and water retention
The time of day: weight fluctuates depending on meals, sleep, activity
Menstrual cycle: surges in hormones have multiple effects on the body
Lack of sleep: increased stress hormones activate inflammation
High stress: similar to lack of sleep, stress triggers inflammation responses
Wearing different clothes: whenever weighing yourself at home, do it naked
Increased alcohol intake: alcohol is a diuretic: it promotes water loss. The body will rebound after a night of drinking by holding onto excess water to make up for it.

Looking for the Trend:

Here’s a common scenario:

You go out for a friend’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant. You have margaritas with the salted rim — duh. You have the chips and guac. You have the tacos. You stay out a little later than you anticipated because you are having fun. You get home late. Crash into bed.

The next morning you get up — and feel hungover as hell. You decide you want to weigh yourself to make sure you “didn’t overdo it last night.” As your pulling your scale out, you think of some arbitrary number: an expectation of what you think you should weigh based on the last time you weighed yourself. Which could be weeks ago.

You step on and the scale reads 5 pounds over what you expect. You step off and think:

“Omg. How much did I eat last night? Okay. Mexican is out. No more margaritas. And I’m going to focus only on having veggies today.”

— End Scene. —

Let’s break this down as to what really happened:

Salty food (margs, chips, food) = water retention
Alcohol = body holding onto water that it lost
Poor sleep = inflammation
Seldom weigh-ins = leaving it up to an arbitrary number sets us up for failure.
Cutting out food groups = deepens a negative relationship with food and is related to binge eating/yo-yo dieting.

Is it possible that you ate in a *slight* calorie surplus and stored a *slight* amount of fat? Yes. Is it possible that you ate enough to gain 5 pounds? No.

I have been participating in the 12-Week Program and tracking my weight over the course of the program to keep an eye on progress. The red dots indicate spikes in my weight over the last month. The biggest one is a jump in 4 pounds from one day to the next.

What is more important to notice: after every spike is a drop.

And when you look at the overall picture — you start to see a trend:

The trend-line — or average — weight over the course of the program.

By weighing myself more often, I can see the small shifts in my weight from day to day. I notice that some days it spikes and other days it drops. But what I’m paying the most attention to is the overall trend. Week over week, I’m looking to see where the average is heading.

You aren’t able to see that data if you’re weighing yourself once a week. There’s not enough data to get a good average. What if on that weekly weigh-in your numbers spike for any of the reasons listed above that aren’t related to fat gain?

If I only weighed myself on the “red-dot” days — I would see barely any progress. I might get frustrated and tell myself it’s not working and quit.

By collecting data from your scale more often, you are giving yourself permission to see the big picture. The spikes and drops don’t have nearly as much power over your day because you know it’s all part of the process.

My suggestion is to weigh yourself at least 4 times a week, at the same time of day if possible, without clothes. Make it consistent and gather data.

Understand it’s part of the process and watch your relationship with stepping onto the scale change with it.

something is better than nothing

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