This is a guest post from Ted Hessing. Ted keeps himself out of trouble by selecting and pursuing various goals like getting back in shape by swimming long distances or practicing kung fu to recover from surgery over at Cubicle Warrior.
What weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers? I know, you’ve heard this one before and you know the answer. Some people instinctively answer the former because they visualize their density. Others answer the latter due to the sheer bulk 2000lbs of feathers would take up. What many people don’t know is that this exercise is vitally important for each of us on our own journeys to Get Fit Slowly.
Mac has achieved his goal of ‘getting fit slowly’ by hard work, eating clean, and a strict adherence to counting calories and measuring his weight on a regular basis. This is a great practice for him and indeed many other people seeking to Get Fit Slowly. However, it’s not for everyone. In fact, it can be a very dangerous approach for many. In this guest post Mac has been gracious enough to let me examine some of my concerns.
Lots of us want to lose weight for a variety of reasons. We focus on a certain number that we believe we should weigh. We rationalize the number with crazy thoughts:
- “At that weight I’d look great in a swimsuit”
- “At my height this chart says I should weigh this much!”
- “I used to weigh that number before and life was better then!
- Wow! That guy weighs Xlbs! If I weighed that much I’d look just like him!
These numbers come from all sorts of psychological triggers. For example, before my wedding I wanted the number to get down closer to my college weight. Alternatively, when I went to college I desperately wanted the number to go up so I wouldn’t show up on campus as the 90 lb weakling!
Fitness is not a number
What’s your definition of fitness? For some people, fit means a number on a scale—a target weight. For others it means fitting back into those college jeans. Still for others it means competing in a bodybuilding show, triathlon, marathon, or other sporting event. Maybe a better definition is simply being better tomorrow than we are today in some meaningful way. Unfortunately, your weight is not a very good barometer for measuring progress towards that goal. Maybe we should also consider the general make up of our bodies in conjunction with our target weight.
Body Composition
The number I like to reference most in my personal battle against the bulge is body fat percentage. A body fat percentage is nothing more than the ratio of fat you have on your body compared to how much lean mass you have.
By tracking both my target weight and body fat percentage (instead of just my weight), I get a more accurate picture of how much fat I am losing and how much muscle I am gaining. Here are a few examples to help show you why I hate relying solely on scales to measure your fitness
Example 1: Scales can hide progress
A 200 lb man with 20% body fat has 40 pounds of fat and 160 pounds of lean body mass (lbm).
After 4 weeks of working out in the gym, dieting, and counting calories, he still weighs 200 lbs and he’s mad! But during those 4 weeks, he managed to drop his body fat to 16%. He now has 32 pounds of body fat and 168 pounds of lbm. That’s some serious progress in 1 month, but the scale hides his progress.
Example 2: Scales Making You Fat
The first example was a happy case. Sadly, I saw the opposite case all to often among friends in high school and college.
A 130 lb woman with 20% body fat has 26 lbs of body fat and 104 of lbm.
After 4 weeks of working out in the gym, dieting, and counting calories, she still weighs 130 lbs and she’s mad!
Unfortunately, she didn’t measure her body fat and failed to recognize that at 15% body fat she’s now got 20 pounds of body fat and 110 pounds of lbm. Totally discouraged, the woman decides her fitness plan isn’t working and more drastic measures are necessary. She restricts her caloric intake severely. She is now too tired to go to the gym. A month later she’s happy because the scale now lists 120 lbs.
But what happened to her body composition over that time frame? Even though she’s dropped to 120 lbs, her body fat is back to the original 20%. She’s now got 24 pounds of fat and 96 pounds of lbm. When compared to her original numbers, she’s lost 2 pounds of body fat, but she’s also lost 8 pounds of lbm and that’s nothing to be happy about.
By not paying attention to body fat %, both the people in the above example were given misinformation about their fitness levels.
Conclusion
I am not claiming in the least that regularly monitoring your weight on a scale encourages these bad behaviors. I just want to remind the GFS audience that we shouldn’t rely solely on the weight on a scale in your search for fitness because it can be misleading. Weight is a single number and it will tell you just that – how much you weigh – not what the quality of your body composition is. A 20 lb sack of potatoes will weigh the same as a 20 lb sack of anything else but their contents are entirely different.
While numbers are so easy to measure, (and believe me, I’m a numbers kind of guy!) they can be misleading. In the case of tracking calories, they don’t tell the whole story. Calories alone do not tell a whole picture of a meal and pounds on a scale don’t tell the measure of fitness of a person. Certainly those numbers can help provide a rough guide – and sometimes that’s all that your need. Sadly, some people take those numbers too far in extreme cases and do far more harm than good.
What do you think about tracking numbers in terms of fitness? Do you monitor body fat percentage? Have you ever seen someone obsess over the wrong kind of numbers in their personal fitness quest?
A quick note from Mac:
I think that Ted, and a lot of readers of this blog, including JD, my best friend Jon, and my mom think that the only number I’m concerned with when it comes to my fitness is the number on the scale. I agree that that’s the number that I talk about most often. But the reason for this is simple:
Other numbers that I’ve been known to use while measuring my fitness levels include waist size, body fat % and the various skin fold measurements associated with that number, as well as number of push ups and pull ups that I can do. I also compare my run times on the same course every once in a while to see how I’ve improved as a runner.
Even though I sometimes seem one dimensional, behind the scenes, I can assure you that I’m not. Thanks for reading. End of rant!
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for posting, Mac!
There are some very good points here. I’m always trying to tell my fiance that there are many things that can cause your weight to go up or down on a daily basis.
Does anyone have recommendations on a good body fat measuring device? My bathroom scale measures body fat but I read somewhere that those are very inaccurate.
RC – I always prefer calipers and use a 7 site skinfold for % measurements. I also find that measuring myself leads to inconsistent results so these days I ask a personal trainer to measure me. If you do decide on calipers, the precision metal version is worth the cost compared to cheaper, less-accurate plastic ones.
Ted—agree on the metal calipers and having someone else measure you. This is one of the problems with determining accurate BF%, wouldn’t you agree?
Definitely agree that cost and external dependecies are issues with the caliper bodyfat, Mac. I guess I see it as a matter of degree. I feel like the consistency and numbers I get with a caliper is worth the trade off. For example, the water issue you mention doesn’t come into play with caliper readings over time like it does on a scale. While it’s uncomfortable to be pinched for the measurements – and even MORE uncomfortable to be semi-naked in front of a health professional (likely in superb shape), I always found that knowing I was being measured every 2 weeks made it easier to stick to my diet. I was accountable in 3 places 1) Myself, 2) The trainer and 3) the numbers.
What’s a reliable way to regularly measure body fat at home? I agree with your post, but all I have at home is a scale so I weigh in weekly. I am able to get nutrition facts from the foods I eat, so counting calories/fat/protein etc is also easy. Aside from looking at my gut, I have no way to measure my body fat at home. I’ve read about calipers online but seem to always come away with too much doubt about their reliability to actually make a purchase.
RC and Phil—It is definitely true that most home scales that measure body fat percentage by electrical impedance aren’t that accurate. However, I think they do measure trends fairly well so they will tell you pretty accurately if your BF% is increasing or decreasing. The real number doesn’t matter very much anyway, right? If you’re soft, then you want to decrease your BF% and your scale will help you to determine if that’s working.
That being said, I love the Withings Wifi Body Scale
. It seems to work very well and I love that it uploads my weight and BF% to the internet automatically over my home wifi connection. That’s an affiliate link so if you buy it using that link, I’ll get a small cut. Check it out.
Mac, I tried a bf% scale a long time ago and it drove me to distraction with the way it fluctuated based off of how hydrated I was. Have you found Withings’ to be accurate, say when compared to before going to bed to first thing the next morning? If so, I will go pick one up (through the link, of course)!
Ted, that’s a tough problem that all body fat scales have. My solution is to ONLY check myself at the same time each day. Every morning, I get up, pee, and step on the scale. Before I eat, drink, or exercise I test my weight and body fat. To me, that is the most consistent way to measure it. Remember, I don’t care about the actual number, just the trend. As with any scale, I think it measures the trend in both body weight and body fat very well. Click my link
You’ve got a typo, 200lbs of feathers, should be 2000lbs (first paragraph).
I think bodyfat % should be used instead of pure weight. Weight means nothing. Measurements in certain places do, but measuring your arms, for example, is pointless if you are trying to get stronger as well. I need to lose about 50 lbs of fat but I hope my arms get bigger in the process. Obviously waist and chest measurements will get smaller as I lose my gut and man-boobs.
omegared—Thanks for pointing out the typo…It’s been corrected. I don’t agree with you when you say that weight means “nothing.” It is the one measurable tool in your arsenal that you have access to EVERY SINGLE DAY if you choose to use it. It’s not the only tool, but it is a good bellwether to help you see where your fitness trends are going. In general, unless you are really skinny and/or hitting the weights really hard, if your weight is going up, you’re getting fatter.
Some other ideas for measuring fitness progress
5k time trial (is your time improving?)
Create benchmark workouts that you do every 3 months or so, such as the 5k time trial, 100 pushups (how long does it take you? & how do you feel doing them?), 100 squats etc.
Strength numbers, keep track weekly of your Deadlift, Squat, Bench & Shoulder Press.
If both your 5k and your deadlift are improving, but you weigh 5 pounds more than you did three months ago, you are probably more fit than you previously were. Careful with these numbers though, if you are gaining weight and only improving in strength, but not in speed and agility you might not be getting “more fit” just stronger.
Love that idea, Bekka. After I stopped bodybuilding I found it very difficult to focus on fitness by those conventional numbers (scale, bodyfat, circumference, etc). Switching to distance swimming gave me the fix with times. Ultimately, “fit” is subjective and is in the eye of the beholder, right? All we can do is find the kind of constructive challenge that resonates best with us and pursue that.
I used to use the scale solely in the beginning because it’s all I knew. Now I use a combination of body fat testing and fitness tests. Every two months I do the same fitness test in running, biking and swimming and see how much faster I am or how much lower my heart rate is with the same speed. Those numbers show me fitness far more than the scale now.
It’s easy to become discouraged when the scale doesn’t move but body fat checking (although unpleasant) is fantastic. I did that terrible hard core calorie cut too and was for awhile 10 lbs less than I am know. But I can now wear the same clothes as then and have some pretty ripped arms to show off. But going solely on numbers, I’m 10 lbs heavier.
Rita, I’m with you on the fitness test. I’ve been going through the 5×5 workout and watching and recording the poundages go up each week has been incredibly fulfilling. Much more so than getting pinched every 2 weeks!
Ted, I wish i could find a 5X5 partner. I tweaked my back doing deep squats about 18 months ago and now I’m afraid. But I loved those workouts when I was doing them.
Yeah, I confess to being scared of squats myself. It’s really easy to get hurt there. The thing I like about 5×5 – or rather my self-imposed version of it – is that I started at 135lbs for the 3 main exercises and I do not allow myself to go up in weight until I can go up in all 3. For example, I could not go to 145lbs in bench until I could also do it on squat and deadlift. This modification has done a few things for me (as I too do not have a spotter) 1) I feel a better balance of muscle 2) lagging areas get focus 3) stronger areas get more concentrated work on form and 4) slow, deliberate motion really helps my stabilization muscles. I just hit 225 across the board this week – my first milestone! I’m not where I want to be yet, but I feel great.
Mac, I suspect your critics may be suffering from a well known side-effect of fitness regimens: “number envy.”
Dan—That’s funny! Glad to see you still poke your head in here once in a while! How’s it going?
I scale once a month. However I always compare with my effort to fitness.
How so, Fit guy?