Why Measuring Weight is a Crap Indicator of Health

I don't like weight as a measurement for client progress.

Have a salty meal the night before, and all the hard work you put into the past week is undone...or at least it feels that way.

And all because the water retention from last night's chinese sent the numbers up from last week's weight ??

How is that a good indicator of you making positive health progress??

This is something I bang on about constantly, and yet, I still find myself talking to my clients about measuring weight when they first start with me.

So I thought to myself..."instead of telling people, how can I show them that weight is essentially the shittest way of tracking progress?"

The easiest solution I could think of was weighing myself...every single day.

And this is exactly what it looked like:

It looks like one hell of a rollercoaster ride doesn't it?!

So let's break it down...

First day:

Now this is the dream!!

Kick-starting the weight loss journey with over a 2kg loss is amazing right?!

But it doesn't take a genius to work out - this IS NOT fat.

It is physically impossible for it to be.

So straight away, the sirens should be blaring...if this isn't measuring fat loss (which is the indicator we want for improved health), then what is it measuring?

The answer to that is?everything.

To see this amount of weight loss in such a short time-frame though, we would have to assume it is water weight.

A week in isolation:

Now this is shit...

Take a week in isolation and it is easy to think "what is the point?!"

Yes, I deliberately picked a bad outcome here, but this is what people do when they measure weekly on the scales.

And to see myself go from 92kg to 92.7kg, after doing everything right that week, is demoralising

When looking at weight this way, it is easy to see how people can get severely upset about it.

Seeing your 'set point':

Your set point, also called a plateau by some, is just as frustrating as seeing things go up.

You want to see things constantly moving in the right direction, right?!

But that isn't how it works ??

Your body has a natural set point, but this doesn't mean you can never get below, it just means you might be here for longer than you'd like.

Because of the consistent gain over-time, your body's 'set point' will have adapted to be higher. That sounds shit.

The good news is, with consistent effort, your body's 'set point' can decrease over time too.

It is clear from my numbers that my set point is around 92kg.

I want that to be lower but it just isn't going right now. But...I will keep doing what I am doing, knowing that the trend down will continue eventually.

Speaking of trends:

The long term one is the only one I need to look at.

Day by day, week by week, weight can fluctuate -?that is okay.

Because it is the long-term view that is important.

From the start of the month to the end of the month, I am down around 5kg ??

What is more important, I am feeling HEALTHIER, FITTER, and my tightest t-shirts feel much more COMFORTABLE to wear.

Regardless of how much I weigh, if those 3 things above are in place, I am winning.

There is no issue with measuring your weight, as long as you understand what it all means in the grand scheme of things,?and that you have something else to measure your progress with.

If you are a serial scales user, then I hope this proves useful ??