Believe your scale or your eyes?

Holidays are in season, and we are likely to gain a few unwanted pounds. It doesn’t have to happen, if we are careful. Watch what you eat and know how to read your scale.

Let’s discuss weighing yourself. Sounds simple: get on the scale, read the number…smile or frown.

Not so fast!

First, your weight is only an approximation of what you are interested in, your body fat, as measured by, for example, the Body Mass Index [BMI], the ratio of your weight to your height squared [an approximation of your body’s surface area]. Your height remains constant once you become an adult, so the factor that changes is your weight. If your BMI is too large, you are obese, and if it is too small, you are emaciated. Read more about BMI elsewhere.

Buy yourself a good scale, one with a digital read-out. For example, it says “124,” rather than showing an arrow pointing somewhere between 123 and 125 or between 120 and 125.

Weigh yourself in your underwear, at most. Clothes vary with the season, and their weights vary.

Get to know how your scale and your body weight vary. Step on the scale a half-dozen times at the first use, to make sure it gives the same reading or, at worst, only two readings, such as 124 and 125. More variability than that will drive you a little crazy…a little crazier?

Next, weigh yourself several times a day for several days at about the same times, so you have an idea how much your weight varies due to ingestion and elimination. You will likely be surprised at the degree of variability. Once you recognize this, you will be less delighted or depressed when you seem to lose or gain a pound or two.

Before you start a weight-loss or weight-control program, one to which your doctor has no objection, weigh yourself for several times and record those weights, as they form your “baseline.” Weigh yourself weekly thereafter, at the same time of day, and record these weights. I like to do it in the morning just before showering, but you will have your own preference.

Why not weigh yourself daily? Even if not truly gaining or losing fat, you will see weight changes from day to day that will be small and within the range of variability of the scale and your own daily variation. You want to see changes that are real, not merely apparent. Patience!

Want to lose fat? Don’t we all! A pound of fat corresponds to about 3600 calories of food that has not been used for energy. A person with little activity will use about 10 times his or her body weight in calories per day.

We know a woman who is bedridden and weighs about 130 lbs., so to keep her weight constant, she is given a diet of about 10×130=1300 calories per day. If she could be much more active, that multiplier could be 12 or 13 or even 15, instead of 10. When she wanted to lose weight, her diet was dropped by 100 calories per day [a small glass of milk, a slice of bread…]. That meant that every 30 to 40 days, on average, she lost a pound, until her target weight was reached. Imagine if her diet had been cut nearly in half, to a meager 700 calories per day, saving her 600 calories per day. It would still take her almost a week to lose a pound of fat!

Why do some people report enormous weight losses at the beginning of some diets? Water loss and the more rapid evacuation of the bowels. After these initial losses are achieved, the program suddenly seems to lose effectiveness. Keep in mind how many calories must be lost through reduced intake or by increased activity. If you frequent a gym with equipment that tells how many calories you have expended, you will quickly see how hard it is to expend 600 calories, much less the 3600 calories you need to burn to metabolize a pound of fat…if fat were the first part of your body composition to be metabolized, rather than muscle, an issue for another day

So, it’s diet rather than exercise that dominates weight gain or weight loss, usually. In fact a nutrition and health web site done by a friend of mine, Susan Hyman, has just that as its title, itsdiet.com.

Be careful about what you eat. Don’t strike out when you step up to the plate.

Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., is a retired scientist, now an author [douglas@tingandi.com] who now helps others the write their own books. He wrote Ting and I: A Memoir… and co-authored Ava Gardner’s Daughter? and The Shield of Gold, all published by Outskirts Press [outskirtspress.com] and available through Outskirts and amazon.com.