Is Your Scale Being Mean?

So you’ve decided to lose weight. You’re now eating healthier and exercising daily. You’ve thrown out all the junk food from the cupboards, and you’ve been using every opportunity you have to get your heart pumping and calories burning.

You’ve been doing everything right, and now you want to see how much weight you’ve lost. You step on the scale, expecting to see at least 5 pounds banished. But wait, are your eyes playing tricks on you? The scale isn’t showing any difference from last week? Is it broken? You run over to a friend’s house and ask to use their scale. It’s showing the same thing!

You come to the realization that you just can’t lose weight. After all the hard work, and not a bit of difference! What’s the point in eating healthy and exercising if you’re not dropping the pounds?

Unfortunately, too many people only see weight loss as the needle on the scale going down. Obviously, we all want to see those numbers dropping, but you’re not looking at the physical results. Maybe you haven’t lost any body weight, but have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?

If you’re eating healthy and exercising, you are losing fat, but you’re also gaining muscle. Because muscle weighs more than fat, it only makes sense that replacing fat with muscle will balance your weight for awhile, making you think you’ve hit a plateau. Don’t let this get you down. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. Soon, you will start seeing results on the scale.

But before you get on the scale, and even before you start losing weight, take a tape measure and measure your arms, hips, waist, and thighs. If you don’t have a tape measure, use a belt or a string instead.

Instead of looking at your actual weight for results, keep measuring yourself every week to see the true results. Make sure you measure yourself in the mornings before you eat. And don’t discourage yourself by doing it more than once each week.

If you’re only using the scale to measure your success, you may give up early and get back to old habits. By tracking your measurements, you’re staying motivated when you see the physical results each week.

If you feel like you’ve eventually reached a plateau, don’t see that as a reason to quit eating right and exercising. This should be a part of everyone’s daily life, whether they are trying to lose weight, maintain their weight, or even gain weight.

You want to look good on the outside, but it’s even more important how healthy you are on the inside.