Attention Scale Addicts!
This one is for those of you with fat loss goals, and I’m not pulling any punches. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. That is certainly not my intention. At the risk of sounding sexist, the vast majority of “scale addiction” sufferers I have encountered have been women, but there are plenty of men in need of this advice:
Get off the scale!
Measuring gravity’s affect on your body, and then assuming that measurement to be relevant to your physical attractiveness is insanity. Stop doing that. Now!
I will concede that the scale can be a motivational tool in the first few weeks of paleo eating and proper exercise, but after that it quickly becomes worthless. Please allow me to make a few points and try to play to your sense of reason.
- If a woman or man is attractive, would they also be attractive on Jupiter? They would weigh a lot more there. Would they somehow be much hotter on the moon due to weighing much less?
- Can you imagine answering the door when a blind date arrives and having them greet you with, “Wow! You might actually be hot! Can you step on this scale so I can know for sure?”
- When I was a teenage boy trolling the mall in American Suburbia, we didn’t carry scales to weigh the young girls we drooled over. We were capable of acting like complete idiots without need of such tools.
- A new female client, 5 feet 5 inches tall, recently told me that she believed her ideal weight to be 115 lbs. I asked her if she wanted to qualify that vision with anymore information and she said no. So I clarified for her that what she was saying was essentially that all women who are 5 feet 5 inches tall and weigh 115 lbs have great bodies. Of course that is utter nonesense. There are, without question, very many women with those numbers that absolutely do not have great bodies. It seems even more absurd if you apply the same logic to men. Would anyone ever assume that all men look great at 5 feet 11 inches and 180 lbs? Dear God, No! Think chicken legs and pot belly.
- Most of us have been in love at some point. Remember the beginning? Remember when your love interest was so smitten with you that they barely touched the ground when they walked? Did they know what you weighed? Nope.
- According to scale addiction logic, there are men all over the world right now who are frustrated with Playboy Magazine to the point of screaming. Playboy gives all the relevant measurements of their centerfolds, except weight. “Damn you Playboy! How can I tell if this woman is beautiful if you won’t tell me what she weighs?!?”
Have I made my point? The bottom line is that the scale just doesn’t have any really valuable information for you. Everyone has heard the obligatory “muscle weighs more than fat” ad nauseum, but scale addiction lives on. Even though, as I pointed out above, weight says virtually nothing about attractiveness, it continues to be the primary focus of most women and many men when it comes to aesthetic goals.
My advice to you if you have aesthetic goals: remember that humans are first and foremost visual creatures. Take circumferance measurements, or just make note of clothing sizes. Why circumferance measurements? Because you can see them. Maybe take a “before” picture of yourself and compare it to the body in the mirror from time to time. If your fitness level improves (more strength, power, speed), and you drop a pant size, is your weight important? If you really think about it, a rational person would be totally willing to gain a few pounds in exchange for losing an inch in their squishy spots.
You can have a healthier perspective. Don’t obsess over the stuff that doesn’t really matter. Be rational when prioritizing your benchmarks and you can stay on track without pulling your hair out in patches. Just something to think about.
I’ll admit it right now, I’m pretty phobic about scales and their use in fitness.
This goes back to when I really started getting serious about fitness and getting my life together health wise. Several years ago, I made a commitment to myself to get in shape, much like everyone else does, but this was pretty serious. I was about 290, suffering from a HUGE gut, extreme back pain, and really bad nutrition. Go figure. A chef, and I can’t even feed myself correctly.
Long story short, I signed up for 24-hr fitness and lucked out with an amazing pair of trainers (one being Chris McDonald, now the owner of “X-factor Cross fit” in the Pearl), they got me on track with good nutrition, and over the course of a few years, had me fit, and down to 200 pounds.
The problem was, that 24-hr fitness stresses CONSTANT measuring of weight on the scales, it was SO frustrating! The process of loosing a fair amount of weight is a struggle, even if you have help. Plateaus, play havoc on your motivation and emotions, let alone the up and down, and up and down scenarios on the scale while your body is letting go of fat and adjusting to this BIG physiological change.
I became compulsive at a certain point (after loosing most of my weight) about getting on the scale DAILY, it was almost OCD, very obsessive.
I really don’t know how, or why I stopped. Perhaps it was just to end the madness of the emotional roller coaster, getting on the scale, worrying if I’ve gained or lost (even half a pound more or less was frustrating), I threw my bathroom scale in the recycle bin, and said “NO MORE!”
I decided to be happy with WHO and WHAT I had become.
With the new knowledge of Paleo nutrition, and knowing what specific food groups (ie:dairy, nuts and fruit) do to me, I can use this information accompanied with kickass workouts at CFC, and not worry about what my weight is.
I feel great and look better than I have in my life.
Note: Jason asked me after completing the recent CFC “fit by spring” fitness challenge, HOW MUCH weight I lost from the challenge (I KNOW I lost a fair amount this time), I just said “I have no idea, I don’t use scales”. Unbeknown to me this article/post in Primitive Stimulus was waiting for me.
There were two instances in my life when I lost a bunch of weight. One was in 2005 when I went from approx 250 to about 205. The second time was in 2009/2010 when I went from approx 230 to 180 and I hover around 190. I don’t actually know how much I weigh and have always weighed myself infrequently over the years. I lost weight and started to look good, so the scale meant NOTHING to me. It was about how I looked with my shirt off. Bottom line. Needless to say, I need to work on my leg strength, but hey, at least I can say it was never about the scale and always about the superficial “how I look on the oustide.”
Great post Jason! I hope your members read this and go “I guess I need to switch up my train of thought.” The only thing this post might do is help by calming them the *bleep* down.
Jeromie
Hey there,
Could you please email this link to me five years ago?
Thanks!
Ada
Give me a second, I’ll fire up the time machine.
I second that. To this very day, I’m obsessed with the scale.
I think I might try just measuring circumferences.
I just tried on my favorite pair of jeans from high school (yes, high school–they were really great jeans). I weigh 20 pounds more than I did then, but the jeans were a little loose. I definitely still own a bathroom scale, but it sure doesn’t give me the satisfaction that those old friends The Jeans did!
Awesome example, Carrie! And way to go!
After completing the last CFC fit by spring contest I still have no idea what my weight is. What I do know is that I lost one pant size and my double unders are better than ever!
Just a little sharing, at some point in my life I used to give that scale way too much power… it could make my day or ruin it…
I think about how silly that was now. As good as I feel and as healthy as I am, why would I let any number dictate how I felt..? Just like so many other things that have changed in my life, so did this! My scale has been retired for a while and it has been one of the best things I’ve done. I would encourage the gals to put it up for a time. See what happens for a month or so, and how you feel…
Jason, I love the points you make about playboy and clothing sizes. Well said!
I really needed this article today. I was feeling really slim this weekend and hadn’t weighed myself in a couple weeks. I feel so much leaner (lots of RKBs sessions etc.), but when I stepped on the scale I was 2.5lbs heavier than before. I have been in a p*ssy mood all day because of this and it really, really means absolutely nothing. It’s just so hard to re-train my brain to recognise that the number on my scale does not equal health, fitness, or how attractive I am. I think I might take the leap and actually get rid of my scale tonight.
Love it, thanks for sharing & discussing the topic Jason!!
I agree with all I have read here. I come from a family where we all seem to weigh atleast 10 pounds more than what we look like (does that make sense?) which always caused me heartache, and now I see it affecting my daughter. She is an athlete, 5’5″ and at 165 lbs. She is strong, but not fat. She trains regularly. She feels inadequate when her “skinny” friends comment on their weights, all being under 120, and eat all the junkfood they want! I have recently lost 30lbs and am trying to influence her eating habits so that she does not gain any weight and continues to excercise, even though her skinny friends are couch potatoes! As far as the scale, I tell her all the time that its just a number and does not take into account your height, body mass etc. But still I find myself weighing in every morning…why…because I still cheat alot (beer, sweets) and that number is a quick reminder to get back on track. At 5’3″ I am at 157, but I am a size 10-12 and am content at this weight. I am told I look great (by my husband mostly) and am not concentrating on losing any weight, just at eating right and toning (rather flabby at 47).
Valid points and for sure an interesting read, however for many athletes in the fighting world not using a scale just isn’t an option, until fights are made by some other means the fighters of this world will always be slaves to the scale, at least around the weigh ins!
True, but I don’t see many fighters making the assumption that this post was about them.
I totally agree with you and hate weighing myself, but what about BMI? I think that has ingrained weight into our heads. BMI does not account for body fat percentage and it’s a shame that it is the routine measure of “health.”
BMI is a joke. It only uses weight and height and should therefore be a crystal clear signal of what the medical community thinks of us. We have all been averaged together and labeled fit-less.
AMEN!!!
if you want to measure anything, get some calipers and measure your body fat, or your waist circumference. It’s body fat that you really care about.
The other extra problem with scales is that it creates an excuse for beating yourself up or sabotaging yourself based on those numbers. like ” Ooh I ‘ve lost 2 lbs, I can treat myself to a glass of wine,” or “I haven’t lost any weight, I might as well eat this cream puff then anyway” Obsessing about weight is the problem that causes you to be overweight.
The answer to your weight problem is not on your scales or in your fridge, it’s in your heart. How you feel about yourself, how worthy you believe that you are, how much you like yourself. If you work on THAT stuff; the internal, mental, emotional stuff then your body will change shape naturally as you make more loving choices for your body.
I embrace scales… like age it’s just a number.
But age is not useless. It actually measures something relevant.
So does the scale. It can show you relative trends. It’s just a tool and it has its place in my opinion. Now, it’s more useful when you are obese and have a lot of fat to lose, but weighing myself most days gives me a number I can use against what I am seeing with other measures so I don’t fool myself about what is going on.
Some people can’t weight themselves daily without it becoming an obsession but I like numbers and data and I’ve found watching how my weight, body fat% and clothing size interact over the past two years to be fascinating.
So what do you use the number on the scale for in relation to health, fitness, or aesthetics? How do you apply the information it gives you?
As we saw here http://primitivestimulus.com/2011/06/attention-scale-addicts-part-2/ there isn’t much you can do with that information, unless of course you need to know if a bridge will support you.
Your point about weight and attractiveness is well taken. By no means do I believe that someone’s attractiveness is based on weight. But weight is not just about how attractive you are and has many more implications, ie weight is a useful measure when your considering health outcomes and other well-being/disease processes.
Do tell! Name a single health outcome or well being/disease process that is affected by weight and not SIZE. In other words, please inform me how circumference measurements will ever fail. I showed you how weight will fail you, especially in part 2 of this post. Please separate WEIGHT from SIZE to support your claims. I do not think it can be done. I think you are still talking about SIZE.
I think this is an important message, but especially for anyone who was brainwashed that scales are THE metric above all others, they’re not. Total inches, fat to muscle ratio, BMI, aerobic fitness, strength. All of these help to build up a picture of where you are with regards to your health. Throwing away scales is too much, in my opinion. The more information I can get and track, the better.
I’ve found giving my gut its own Twitter account has been a help so far.
Again, there is no information to be gathered from the scale except how much load your shoes will bear. Weight is not size, as I clearly proved in Part 2 of this post.
I’ve read Part 2 and it’s impressive, but it doesn’t clearly prove anything. If you could find and document several hundred examples rather than a few, then it would be more emphatic.
The vast majority of people like me who have a significant amount of weight to lose will not weigh the same once they’ve improved their muscle mass. Yes muscle weighs more than fat but not many people would choose to get so massively ripped that they carried bodybuilder-levels of muscle.
I fully agree that a blind devotion to scales and weight as a metric is foolish but it is a useful measurement to take in association with others.
I think you are still missing my point so I’ll take a different tact. Please name one single piece of relevant information that you can get from a scale that you can not get from measuring the SIZE of your body, and then tell me how you would use that information. In other words, is weight the real problem, and not SIZE, in relation to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, not fitting in a seat on a plane, not being physically attractive, etc? Please give me details. Between this post and part 2, a few of you have argued for the usefulness of the scale, but not one person has given an example that makes sense to me.
I don’t need any more than a single example in my post because it only takes one to show a difference in body size at the same weight. The post was not about Deb’s accomplishment. It was crystal clear proof that the scale can and usually will eventually mislead you, while this is not possible with circumference measurements. Nobody is saying you will weigh the same once you have improved your muscle mass. I am saying that you can not set a goal weight and expect to look a certain way. You can ABSOLUTELY set goal measurements and expect to look an EXACT way.
“…but it is a useful measurement to take in association with others.” How?? If your waist is reduced to 30 inches, most of us would say your waist is a good SIZE. And yet you can easily look like bloody hell if your weight is reduced to 180 lbs. So again I ask, what are you using that number on the scale for, except to get emotionally attached to something that is right on schedule to let you down?
Muscle does not weigh more than fat. Muscle is more COMPACT than fat, so it takes up less space for the amount of mass in comparison to fat. A pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of pennies, just like a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. They just take up a different amount of space.
Good point, but I’m sure that’s what people are trying to say. The semantics are irrelevant to the fact that they don’t really believe what they are saying. Which is why I wrote part 2 of this post.
No, I realize that. But that adage bothers me, because it’s not true. What people should be saying is “Muscle takes up less space than the same amount of fat.” It doesn’t weigh more. Nothing weighs more than something else if those two items are the same weight. It’s just a pet peeve of mine, because the words lean towards a negativity about muscle, especially in women. That’s where you get women spouting silly things like “But I don’t want to bulk up with muscle because it’s heavy, I want to be thinner!”, when in reality, building muscle will make them thinner, because it will take up less space.
I am completely obsessed with my scale and I have also done circumferance measurements but I still just want to see that damned number go down. I feel like I work my tail off, try to watch what I eat, but still nothing changes. I get so damned frustrated that I go right back to watching the scale. It’s an endless loop and I cannot afford a gym membership so I’m stuck being my own personal trainer and I’m going nowhere fast (for the last 5 years). What do you suggest?
I suggest you read part 2. Also, it sounds like you might be assuming that exercise is the most important part of the equation. You mention diet in passing, but exercise really doesn’t have much to do with fat loss. Are you eating a paleo diet, maintaining good sleep patterns, and avoiding exercise that increases cortisol and oxidative stress (like cardio)?
I just found your site and I do not know what a paleo diet is. I do maintain good sleeping. For exercise I fast walk not really jog for about 20 min in the mornings before work. In the evenings I do a core/strengthening program that is mostly stretching, lunges, bicep curls, arm hammers, etc. I feel like all I am doing is maintaining the out of shape body that I already have and I’m not really fixing any of my body issues……….and the dial on the scale never budges!
Good news – this whole site and all the sites in my blog roll are all about the paleo diet. All the information you could ever want is right at your finger tips, including scientific studies, step-by-step walk-throughs on how to get started, entire online communities, and more recipes than you can ever cook. There might be more information available to you than you could read in one lifetime. Here are the basics on this site http://primitivestimulus.com/nutrition-basics/, but don’t stop there!
I’m almost afraid to post an opposing viewpoint, but so what, I’m strong. I’m a 59 year old woman who started with approximately 1/2 my body weight to lose. I have already lost 1/4 since last March (from 240 to 180 lbs, I’m 5’3″ btw).
I weigh myself every morning on an Omron scale that measures/calculates weight, body fat% and skeletal muscle% (and some other stuff that I don’t really care about). Most mornings I don’t even really register what the results are mentally; I just record them. Every two weeks I enter the data in Excel, calculate the lbs of fat and lbs of skeletal muscle and graph the results. What I see is a steady decline in fat and a small increase in muscle. I don’t know if the results from my scale represent my actual % of fat and muscle, but I do believe that the relative results over time accurately reflect the trend of loss (fat) and maintenance (muscle). I recently went off blood pressure medicine which had a diuretic component. My weight went up several pounds when that happened, but my fat loss kept going down, so no problem.
I find the ritual weigh-in each morning to be a good reminder to myself of the changes I’m trying to make, and it works as a kind of affirmation. I also find the data I collect to be very interesting to analyze and helpful to review. I can see the results when I started eating moderately low-carb paleo, went off bp meds, started working with a new trainer.
I thought about getting a dexa scan to measure my actual fat and muscle % and calibrate my scale. I changed my mind however; the actual values aren’t very important (as you point out, they would be quite different on Jupiter) but the trends in the relative values are helpful and fun to see.
Good stuff, but not an opposing view. You are actually measuring fat loss, not the amount of weight your shoes are bearing.
“I recently went off blood pressure medicine which had a diuretic component. My weight went up several pounds when that happened, but my fat loss kept going down, so no problem.”
This is not what happens when we use the scale as a measure of our success. You saw the scale go up and it was still okay because fat loss still went down. Well played.
A related quote that also comes at this from a similar angle (awareness)
“It’s never been true, not anywhere at anytime, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit is dependent on a number on a scale.” Geneen Roth
You know what’s funny about this, ok or not funny at all, is that I changed my diet and starting working out religiously after having my second child. I dropped 2 sizes in clothing in 4 months. A trainer at the gym asked me how much weight I had lost, it was 5 lbs. He looked at me shocked and said, “wow it looks like a lot more than that”. And ya know what, I felt terrible. I was so frustrated that I couldn’t drop weight after all that effort. Not once did I stop to feel happy about how I looked. That was 5 years ago. I appreciate the change in perspective and I’m going to toss my scale! Thanks!!!!