One Thing That Silently RUINS Fat Loss or Muscle Gain Progress. (Hint, it's not your diet)

*Sorry for the weird pause at the beginning, intro music did not load!
Do you overthink your health routine? This one's for you. 

I'm hoping that by the end of this, you feel a little bit better and you also feel like you can weigh yourself and understand it and not just have that panicky feeling. Cause I think that comes from really not knowing what it means and the fear that obviously it can never be undone or I, once I gained weight, it's so hard to lose it. 

There's a million things and they're all valid. So basically your weight is a culmination of everything that's going on, right? It's everything that has entered and inflamed and hydrated or dehydrated or any other process, your body in the past 24 ish hours. Most of the things that affect your weight day to day are not fat or muscle or fat loss or anything like that.  That's really hard to come to terms with when weight is such an accurate predictor over time for fat loss,  we all look at our weight over time. Like, did we lose weight? And that makes sense, because over time it is a decent measure of body fat because you're not going to lose, , 150 pounds of heart mass. 

That's not really how it goes. So. there's a few big things that I think really affect your weight. That maybe if you can pay attention to them, you can kind of understand if the skill spikes one day, why that may be. So first thing, salt, if you have a super salty meal and you're not adequately hydrated, your body's goal is essentially to maintain a balance of salt and water, and that's going to affect how viscous your blood is. 

There's a certain level that your body wants to keep it at, right? So we need a good balance of both. When one of those levels gets too high, AKA. K you have a super salty meal. You don't drink enough water. You're not hydrated going into it, whatever it is. That's when we can see that like puffiness in the morning, we might feel a little bit bloated, whatever it may be. Your body's holding onto a little bit more water in order to make that ratio of salt to water, more efficient for your blood flow. 

Pretty important, right? It doesn't really care that you're on a diet and you're going to be sad about what the scale says.

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Transcript

Hello, beautiful people, and welcome back to the show. So today we are going to get into a topic that drives me up a goddamn wall because I think it causes people so much unnecessary emotional distress. It's bananas. And I think that at the end of the day, people are so caught up in it, it can actually like ruin their progress and their health and fitness journey and stall them even further. 

So I think it's really important to talk about. And if you need several Xanax in order to get on the scale in the morning, this one is for you. 

And I'm hoping that by the end of this, you feel a little bit better and you also feel like you can weigh yourself and understand it and not just have that panicky feeling. Cause I think that comes from really not knowing what it means and the fear that obviously it can never be undone or I, once I gained weight, it's so hard to lose it. 

There's a million things and they're all valid. So basically your weight is a culmination of everything that's going on, right? It's everything that has entered and inflamed and hydrated or dehydrated or any other process, your body in the past 24 ish hours. Most of the things that affect your weight day to day are not fat or muscle or fat loss or anything like that.  That's really hard to come to terms with when weight is such an accurate predictor over time for fat loss,  we all look at our weight over time. Like, did we lose weight? And that makes sense, because over time it is a decent measure of body fat because you're not going to lose, , 150 pounds of heart mass. 

That's not really how it goes. So. there's a few big things that I think really affect your weight. That maybe if you can pay attention to them, you can kind of understand if the skill spikes one day, why that may be. So first thing, salt, if you have a super salty meal and you're not adequately hydrated, your body's goal is essentially to maintain a balance of salt and water, and that's going to affect how viscous your blood is. 

There's a certain level that your body wants to keep it at, right? So we need a good balance of both. When one of those levels gets too high, AKA. K you have a super salty meal. You don't drink enough water. You're not hydrated going into it, whatever it is. That's when we can see that like puffiness in the morning, we might feel a little bit bloated, whatever it may be. Your body's holding onto a little bit more water in order to make that ratio of salt to water, more efficient for your blood flow. 

Pretty important, right? It doesn't really care that you're on a diet and you're going to be sad about what the scale says. It cares about keeping your heart going. So we're going to say that that's pretty valid and we're going to accept that. And if you are eating a super salty meal , and your weight does spike the next  day, know that you're just kind of peeing out a little bit less water and getting rid of a little bit less water within  your body. . Everybody stays happy. All your organs are functioning. That is the main purpose. And then there's also things like fiber. So fiber is a similar effect on your weight because it affects digestion and how you  expel food. So fiber is a binder. 

Essentially what fiber does is it takes things as it goes through your body, along the way, and it grabs them out and it takes it with them. And then you excrete it and you poop it out and everyone is happy and you get rid of all the extra stuff. This can be like hormones. Like if you have excess estrogen, that is something that fiber can help grab and take out. There are a million things that fiber is super beneficial for. However, if you have a super up and down fiber intake that can affect how often you poop, if you haven't pooped for two days, because you were a little low fiber after being a little high fiber. 

Well, now we got ourselves a situation on the scale, and that can be really discouraging if you don't know. So if you are not seeing your weight trend in the right direction, over the course of a few days, Just give it a second. It's there's so many things. Fiber, salt. There's a huge one, obviously that is just your menstrual cycle. If you are someone that menstruates, you know, like you will  get puffy,  this can happen after travel. Like you ever gotten off an airplane and your ankles are all swollen. Like you might weigh in a little higher the next few days, a lot of people don't weigh in on vacation, which I really wouldn't recommend. I don't think that's an issue. 

Another thing that can happen that I actually see all the time as a gym owner is that I literally see people start working out and they gain a little bit of weight and yes, you are definitely adding muscle, especially if you're newer to training overall, God, it's so easy to build a muscle based that way. 

I like, I can't recommend getting into strength, training enough if you never have before, because you're, it's the perfect time. That being said, when you do start strength training, or you start resistance training, or you start doing things to your muscles that haven't been done to them in a while. 

They get a little angry and that's actually a really good thing because when your muscles get a little bit inflamed, they have these little tears in them. Your body comes in, heals that and brings it resources and food and blood flow and all of  those good things in order to make sure that that muscle recovers and that's actually how you get stronger. 

And that's how your muscles get bigger and all of those great things. 

However your muscles are also going to hold a little bit more  water. There's going to be some inflammation just from the use and your body not being used to it and trying to adapt to it, which is the whole point of exercise, but that can make the scale spike and it can be really demoralizing and really discouraging. 

If you don't know why. And I want to really make that clear, like you're not wrong for feeling upset about it. What is wrong is you kind of thinking it is the end all be all, and nobody telling you otherwise, because then why wouldn't you be upset about it? Right. 

So now that we've established a bunch of different things can affect what the weight on the scale actually says. Let's talk about the things that actually do affect it on a more long-term level. When you are weighing in on a scale, it is literally telling you how hard your body is pushing against the ground. 

Like that's it. There's nothing else it can tell you, besides that. Have you ever had someone say, like push down on your shoulders when you were standing on a scale?  It goes up, it's a very simple relationship. And unfortunately, our bodies are much more complex than that. So what you can do, there's a few things you can do. The first thing is you can fucking not worry about it because does it really matter how many pounds of muscle you have, like probably not go be a good person and exercise. Like it's not that difficult, but if you do want to dive into it, I really suggest getting some sort of body composition measuring, done. 

In body bod pod, all  good options and body will have a slightly higher variance than bod pod, but embodies are also a lot easier to find because I think they're like a 20th of the price. Bod pods are very expensive to have it as a facility. So if you have like research universities around you or anything like that, 

A lot of times, those places will have them. So I definitely recommend checking that out if you're interested, but if you are not going to accurately kind of assess your body composition, you are not going to know about the changes that happen that will not be told in the scale of story. So what do I mean by that specifically? 

When I see peop specifically when I see people working out, right? So they've started working out, they have a goal of weight loss and yes, they're a little inflamed. Maybe they're, you know, a little puffy from just. Like starting exercise. However, the other component of that is people will for millions of different reasons, put on muscle and lose fat at the same time. And that's not something that easily happens, but there are a lot of reasons that it can happen. First reason being you're brand new to training dieting, things like that, that becomes easier when your body isn't used to it. 

You start to build muscle and burn fat at the same time, it becomes harder over time. The other way that can happen is just being. Up and down in your diet. So if you calorie cycle or if like, you know, you're in a really low deficit one week and you go much higher, the next, whatever it is, that can cause that as well. A lot of people just kind of eat like that day to day. 

 So say you gain in a month, two pounds of muscle and you lost two pounds of fat.  That's not going to show up as anything on the scale. It's going to be the exact same number and you're going to get on and go, what the fuck? Like. 

I've literally been working my ass off. I'm staring at the number. It's the fucking same, like after all that, like, are we for real, I'm going back to the couch. This is bullshit. Like that's a totally fair reaction. And the difference between a body composition scale and a regular scale is that it's going to tell you where those things are coming from. So you, instead of seeing a net zero, we'll see, minus two fat pounds, plus two muscle pounds, and then you go, oh shit, that's a good thing. 

It becomes a very different story. this isn't to put like body composition scales as the forefront. They're just the measurement of it. Your body is made up of water bones. At inflammation, fiber poop, all of it. Like there's so much that goes into it. I want you guys to really understand just your weight is not an accurate measurement. The things I like as measurements in addition to weight are a few things with weight itself. I usually recommend people weigh themselves like once a month or every single day. 

I think the in between is where you get in trouble. Like if you have Chinese food and no fiber, one night, you're salty, you have no fiber in you. You're going to weigh in three or four pounds heavier the next day.  

  If that's your way and day for whatever the week. You're going to be pretty angry at the results, and they're probably not going to be accurate to how the week actually went. If everything else went fine.  

If you weigh yourself once a month, it's a little bit easier to see a difference in that time. And even if you do fluctuate, usually worst case scenario, it'll tell you weigh the same. I'm a big fan of the everyday or the not at all. Honestly, I think that measurements are the first one that I really like because. 

A pound of fat does not weigh more than a pound of muscle, but a pound of fat takes up much more room than a pound of muscle does. So think about it that way. Like if a pound of. Fat is double the size. It's going to show in your measurements and your progress pictures much before it shows on the scale. 

That being said, if you a person that hates progress pictures, I think measurements are great. I don't think that there's a lot of stigma that follows, like weighing yourself that follows with measurements because we don't have this weird reference. Like every woman is convinced they need to weigh 120 pounds, which is fucking bananas for 90% of women. 

Like they don't need to, nor should they. 

I think with measurements, we have less expectation, like already set out. I don't know what it is, but every man wants to be 200 pounds or under. And every woman is like insistent. They should weigh under 130 pounds.  And like if you're a five foot 11 woman,  that's probably not the, the vibe. Like, it's probably not where you want to go with that, but it's become this like normal thing. Measurements sort of take that away. And I liked that because I don't think a ton of people have like measurements in their head. That's like, society's acceptable.  I know a few rap songs gave us some reference, but at the same time, you know,  you can't win everything. 

Measurements, I think are the best for people that do not have a fabulous image of themselves within their head, because I think sometimes progress pictures can exasperate that. And I really find that they're the least emotionally inflaming. However, I think that the majority of people should have multiple measurements because I think that that's the best way to control is just to get more data. 

If you are a person that hates weighing themselves, you don't get anything out of it when it goes down. And you don't feel good when it goes up and you stress about it all day and you think about it all day. That is not good. And that's so not necessary. I like taking weights. Only because your average trend is going to tell me more than anything. So when I work with clients, one-on-one what we do is I'll say, oh, you lost a pound on your average trend and their weigh-ins that week could not, any of them be like too, too crazy. 

And their wins that week might not be the craziest thing. But if we look at the past four weeks of measurements, right, that's going to show us our trend in our trajectory in a linear way, rather than trying to look at the individual fluctuations, which are just going to drive you up a wall. 

I think something I will leave you with here is that the most successful dieters. I see don't get excited when the scale goes down and they don't get upset when the scale goes up. And it's not because they're not affected by those things. Or they're like these strong, it has people like, it's not that. 

It's more so that. 

When you start to get that like kind of exposure therapy type thing, but you understand that there's more to it than just that you can start to actually see it as what it is, and it's just data. And if that is not something you're ready to do, I either recommend going to a professional and having them, you know, help you with your weight loss and making sure that, you know, you're not dealing with numbers and quantities and things that are going to upset you all day, but at the same time,

you don't want to go so far in the other direction, either where everything about it is stressful. Like that's when you start to get disorder, that's when things go wrong. That's when you get into the binge and restrict cycle. If it's something that really bothers you start with just eating a salad every day and drinking a little more water. Most people would see an improvement from just that it doesn't have to be all about numbers. Like it really doesn't. 

However most people are going to weigh themselves anyway.  Most weight loss professionals are going to take some form of measurement to ensure you're taking progress.  The devil, you know, is better than the devil you don't. And I think if you can understand why all of these fluctuations happen, why the scale of driving up a wall, it's so much easier to keep going and not say, fuck it. 

And smash your scale and go to burger king, because like who cares? It's not doing anything. That's the thing I want you to avoid. 

I'll leave you with this. If you are set on a weight and you are like, this is my goal weight. A lot of people have it. That's that's totally fine. However, When people tell me their goal weight, when they're signing on with me, the first thing I asked them is. And it's fucking rude. Like, I don't know why anybody signs up with me. 

I asked them if the weight on the scale said their dream weight, but nothing else changed. They didn't look different. They're closed and fit different. They didn't feel different. Nothing. Would that still be their goal weight. And obviously most people say no. The reason I do that is because most people don't give a flying fucking flow doodle about how much they weigh

it doesn't have anything to do with that number. It's what we make that number mean. And if we can give a logic and facts. Of what that number actually does mean. Sometimes that can take a little bit of the personal touch that our emotions can kind of run through on that. 

So use the scale is what it is. It's just data. Be nice to yourself. If it goes up, be nice to yourself. If it goes down, don't put too much into it either way.  Nobody I've ever worked with has been a completely linear lose weight. Every single day of their fat loss Philly's client, everyone fluctuates up and down. 

And as long as the overall trajectory is headed in the right direction, that's what I want you to look at. Don't go slashing your calories. Don't go looking for a reason. Why 

if anything, I want this to, Uncomplicate it for you because you have reasons and you have facts that you can assign to everything and sometimes that can kinda show us the stories we're telling ourselves of what the weight means about us, or if we're attractive or a good person, or, you know, do charity. Like it doesn't mean anything. 

So fuck the scale. Don't let the scale tell you what to do today. 

 At the end of the day, you're not going to fucking care what you weighed and you know, August of 20, 23, like what? The, like, no one, you're not going to care when you're 90, you're not going to care. I will see you in the next one, guys.  

Okay.

Okay. Okay.