The Scale: How Not to Screw Yourself

It’s a great point Joel.

I would say you could go even further and weigh yourself once a month or once every two months. So long as the mirror and pictures are saying the right thing weight’s not important right?

I found this out by accident. I am trying (successfully using some of your techniques) to shred up for my holiday in four weeks, but for about two months I didn’t have any scales. Still kept going, relying on the mirror for guidance. By the time I finally got my scales I realised I had lost 15lbs. Even better I was still getting stronger!

Yeh, the scales really mess me up so will do once per week weighs only!

Weighing once a week doesn’t trump weighing every day – the reason is statistics. The daily weight has no revelance, but the tendency of your body weight in the long run is the important thing you have to watch. So weigh yourself everyday and calculate the average weight for every week. These average data are the important factors you have to compare to each other.

Imagine you had a sodium rich meal the night before you step on your scale. Then you will carry a lot of extra (water) weight. And how much information have you gained through this if you step on your scale only once a week? No information at all.

When I worked the CYWT system my weekly weigh-ins gradually dropped and then slowly rose. I then added a fat loss monitor and noticed as I gained weight through workouts, my scale readings upped 7 lbs from my lowest weight but my body fat dropped to just under 20%. So checking fat to solid body mass is more important once you have shed the baby fat.

I just want to add to this that some people might want to measure a different or additional spot other than the waist. Personally, I am fortunate to not store much fat around my waist at all, so that spot is not where my maximum inch loss (or gain) will occur. To more clearly see progress, I (and many other females, I would guess) am better off measuring both my thighs or hips AND my waist. (I personally use my thigh, right under the buttocks crease, to ensure getting the same spot every time.)

I have always been amazed at how much weight we burn overnigt while we sleep. If you have never done this give it a try and weigh yourself the night before, then in the morning and see how much you burned in your sleep.

hey joel, side question for you on this blog post, i was wondering what your thoughts about eating at subway are, is it actually healthy or not? i generally indulge on a footlong sub on my cheat days, but wanted to know if i could have one on a mod carb day if it’s alright

i forgot to ask in my last question also, on the XFLD you say we can eat whatever and however many free veggies between meals everyday except fast days, but what about fruits? are we able to eat however many fruits we want or is that to be limited to the calorie totals?

I rarely weight myself, but I’ve had the opposite experience to Andrew. I weight myself Jan. 1st – no holiday weight gain! I didn’t weight in again for about a month and found I gained 9 pounds in 5 weeks!!! I was horrified and to this day I will never understand why I would gain weight AFTER the holidays. Another puzzle is I spent the winter in southern AZ so I was very active. I will never go more than one week without weighing in. Now I’m doing CYWT again to take off that weight.

Hello! This is kind of off topic but I need some guidance from an established blog. Is it difficult to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about making my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Many thanks

I’m not sure I comprehend what you mean.

Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with some pics to drive the message home a bit, but instead of that, this is wonderful blog. A great read. I’ll definitely be back.

go out magazine, yeay.