Why The Scale Isn’t The Best Way To Track Fat Loss

You can’t weigh a chicken with a ruler. It’s the wrong tool. How we measure progress is essential because it determines what we do next. The scale isn’t the best tool for measuring fat loss. It will fluctuate daily due to a variety of factors. Most of them have nothing to do with changes in body fat. It’s mainly the amount of water or food in our system. So even on days when we lose fat, we could gain weight on the scale. This is both frustrating & confusing.

Here are 3 better methods for tracking progress:

1. Measurements

As my buddy and fellow coach, Daniel Rosentrain says, “inch loss = fat loss.” The scale may not move, but, if you’re losing inches, you’re losing body fat. Every two weeks, measure chest, arms, waist, umbilicus, hips, & legs. If any measurements dropped, keep it up. If none did, make some changes.

2. Progress photos

We get used to ourselves in the mirror so we don’t always notice changes (think about your hair - you don’t really notice it growing day-to-day). So we may not think we’ve made progress (because we’re not where we want to be) until we compare ourselves to our previous selves. It may be hard, but take the photos. You won’t regret it.

3. How your clothes fit

This is my favorite. Because pants don’t lie. If you’re fitting into clothes you couldn’t before, then something is working. And, honestly, it’s way more satisfying than seeing a number go down. But, if you’re going to weigh yourself, do it every single day. Write the number down and move on. After a minimum of 4 weeks, look at the overall trend. If it’s going down, that’s all you’re looking for. Otherwise, throw the scale away.

The scale is a fine tool, but if it’s all we use to measure progress, we’ll often have an incomplete picture of what’s really happening.

For tracking fat loss, the scale isn’t the right tool. It can lie. Measurements don’t lie. Photos don’t lie. And pants don’t lie.

Last year, my business doubled in revenue from the year before. I had no idea until I looked at my end of the year numbers. In the midst of it, I felt like I wasn’t actually doing very well. I made some mistakes. I left some opportunities on the table. I had stretches where I felt like an absolute failure & imposter.

In the day-to-day, it can feel like the needle isn’t moving.

Until we zoom out and look at the whole picture over an appropriate time horizon, we won’t know how much progress we’ve made. One day isn’t enough time to make fat loss progress. One week isn’t enough time. Heck, even one month often isn’t even enough time. We have to track our progress because it tells us whether we’re on the right track, but we have to do it on an appropriate timeline and with the appropriate tools. Otherwise, we’ll either think we’re failing and quit or we won’t know that we’re failing and keep going.

We can’t get obsessed with the daily changes, but we also can’t bury our heads in the sand.

There’s a middle ground. Track your progress, but let it be informative rather than determinative. If the measurements are the same, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed; it means you need to change what you’re doing because it’s not working.

In that way, it’s the most important thing we can do.

I recorded an entire podcast episode about the importance of tracking progress and how to make adjustments.