Why the scale lies to us

The last thing I’ll mention is that with fat loss, consistency is key, the metabolism has built in safeguards to balance out any very high or very low calorie days, if you swing your calorie types, or amounts wildly throughout the week, it can be disastrous to your weight loss, I won’t get into details about why, but feel free to ask me in an email or tweet if you want to know more. Just know that if you’re consistently swinging from many hundred calories below maintenance to a few hundred calories above maintenance throughout the week that’s NOT the same as maintaining a 300 calorie deficit every day, the body reacts to extremes, and it reacts with fat storage, this is fact, not opinion.

ok so why is it that "cheat days" where someone might have 1400 calories one day and 2600 the next seem to result in weight loss in the long term? does that person actually store fat because they had one low day and then a high day. why does "zig zagging" work?

bump

I have suspected that my scale was lying to me for some years now!

I needed to hear this, was crying just last night to my friend telling them I am still at the same weight I was when I started gym. But I fit in the size 38 clothes now. Not perfectly but I fit. I can zip them n button the pants up. The problem is just the love handle which is a little too big and I want to get rid of that. My size 40 needs to be given to some one who lost from 44 to 40 because they look too huge on me. Yet the scale hasn't moved.

When I want to make myself feel better, I wake up, gym and immidiately take a bath before I rehydrate. I'm ussually 1lb less than what I was before gym. But also what I do when I don't want to use my scale because I'm one of those who obsess abt the scale. Immidiately after my workout I drink lots of water before bathing. I know I have gained water and the scale will b up by a lb or 2 so I don't bother using it.
My scale is a good friend, but my mirror n my clothes are really disagreeing with what my scale is saying. I will continue strenghth training whether scale moves or not. I know I'm moving

Incredible helpful and well said. Thank you for taking the time to write this .

ok so why is it that "cheat days" where someone might have 1400 calories one day and 2600 the next seem to result in weight loss in the long term? does that person actually store fat because they had one low day and then a high day. why does "zig zagging" work?

there's a lot of variables in this, how often a person is doing this, how long they are staying at the different levels, what their body composition currently is, what types and length of exercise they are doing, how old they are, whether they are in malnutrition or not, whether they are completely filling out their glycogen stores during the re-feeding phase...etc.

Generally zig-zagging does NOT involve calorie surpluses, it involves larger and smaller calorie deficits at very specific timing in order to take advantage of the time it takes to complete glycogen depletion in a 72 hour period. these are advanced techniques that require patience, knowledge and trial and error, usually they are difficult to do correctly and only work for a relatively short period of time (although I know a few people that do it all the time, but it takes a lot of dedication and monitoring to do right).

so if someone had a week of staying around 300 below TDEE but just had one high day and one low day, would this tend to make them store more fat or not? for example, my tdee is 1900. usually i eat around 1600 most days. one day i went as high as 2400 and then another day 1200. would this mean more fat stored because of the high day?

Best explanation I've seen so far!

Bump

Last week I had a freak out when the scale went up a pound and a half...the next day it was down 4 lbs and i decided to hell with scales. I'm going off of how i look & feel and will take measurements instead

Bump

While counting calories and getting good exercise is important, eliminating as much processed food (and thereby eliminating sodium, excess carbohydrates and fat) and replacing it with fresh food is critical. Get rid of the canned vegetables and "instant" foods and replace them with fresh(or frozen) vegetables and food you make yourself - not something from a can or a box. This will help to even out some of those swings on the scales - or at least it has for me.