There are 1,799 reasons why… the scale isn’t a good indicator of progress or success.
Scale obsession can be all too common with our nutrition coaching clients. Trust me: this drives us nuts as nutrition and fitness professionals and often makes us want to smash people’s scales 🤯 🔨
Did you know you can have a low body fat/weight BUT not have a lot of muscle mass? This happens a lot in people that generally don’t eat enough food combined with lots of cardio and not enough strength training. So you can be thin but not have lean muscle mass, which doesn’t equal health.
Not only does lean muscle and bone density impact the scale, but other factors include: hormones, inflammation/injuries, stress + sleep, fiber + water intake, the time of day that you weigh yourself, etc, etc, and yup… did ya’ poop💩 For a lot of our ladies that go thru a reverse diet, it’s important to understand that you are eating more food, so there is more food in the digestive tract. That food absorbs water and can show up as a higher scale weight.
Increased weight on the scale doesn’t necessarily translate to FAT gained.
The scale can be a helpful tool for most people. In fact, we don’t want too demonize the scale. We want to help women find scale neutrality- where the number doesn’t “make or break” our day.
But realize the scale shouldn’t be your only marker of progress.
If you struggle looking beyond the scale it might be time to break-up with the scale and instead, celebrate some Non-Scale Victories (NSV)!
- NSV are positive changes and feedback that your body provides you that indicate progress.
- They don’t focus on a number on the scale.
- Ex: Improvements in: performance, energy, sleep, mood, digestion, menstrual cycle, body composition, and confidence.
At CWA, many of our clients come to us from a place of chronic dieting, under-eating, and over-training. They generally are burned out and struggle with underlying issues like thyroid and sex hormone imbalances and wonder why they struggle to lose weight. Rather than continue down the road of insanity and caloric restriction we often start clients in a reverse diet towards maintenance calories. Sometimes clients lose weight/body composition changes, and sometimes they maintain, and some even gain weight (that they likely needed to gain).
Whatever the goal or process to get to the goal, it’s important to celebrate NSV as the scale doesn’t always tell the full story. Don’t get stuck on a number. If we chase NSV, the weight and aesthetics will follow.
