Throw away your scale!!!!!!!

Progress is great, but the scale is important, too.

Some men can be "obese" from muscle alone. Women, without heavy steroids, only can hit "overweight," and even then, they look pretty huge.

Is your belly button circumference less than 35"? Is your waist-hip ratio also less than .8? Is your natural waist less than half your height (34")? If your BF% less than 32? Once you can say "yes" to all those things, you'll be out of the high risk group in non-scale measures.

Logging all my measures, I've lost 13" (but probably close to 15" because I didn't do knees) in the past month. That was VERY little change in my body composition. The scale lets me know how little it was.

You WILL NOT lose weight until you eat a deficit. And you can't recomp to a healthy body fat percentage from your current weight.

daniface wrote: »

My point was, the scale is not something to focus on as validation of success and I think too many people rely on the scale as proof of progress.... It's much more encouraging to take photos and measurements. If I had only weighed myself these past two months I would have missed the inches I lost and probably would have thrown the towel in defeat. Do I have more work to do? Sure! I still think BMI is outdated and *kitten* way of measuring health though. My hip to waist ratio is .8

Great! Now you're almost below one risk factor and into the normal range there.

What you could have done instead of "throw the towel in" is accurately log your calories. Then you could have gained strength AND lost fat.

BMI is in no way *kitten* for a woman of anything like average build. Only extreme female bodybuilders will tip over into overweight from normal weight while having anything like an athletic body fat percentage.

Scales are useful tools, without question.

I will echo you on BMI, however. It's complete garbage. If people knew the history behind it, I doubt they'd put much stock in its validity.

Congrats on your success! If the scale isn't working for you, ditch it! As long as you are sticking to your goals & losing inches of fat & not losing muscle, then keep it up!! Way to go!

Although the number on the scale is important to me, I gotta agree with you on the BMI. It really does depend on the build of the person. Not everyone is gonna naturally have the same muscle tone or distribute fat the same.

senecarr wrote: »

MamaBirdBoss wrote: »

Progress is great, but the scale is important, too.

Some men can be "obese" from muscle alone. Women, without heavy steroids, only can hit "overweight," and even then, they look pretty huge.

Is your belly button circumference less than 35"? Is your waist-hip ratio also less than .8? Is your natural waist less than half your height (34")? If your BF% less than 32? Once you can say "yes" to all those things, you'll be out of the high risk group in non-scale measures.

Logging all my measures, I've lost 13" (but probably close to 15" because I didn't do knees) in the past month. That was VERY little change in my body composition. The scale lets me know how little it was.

You WILL NOT lose weight until you eat a deficit. And you can't recomp to a healthy body fat percentage from your current weight.

Obese from muscle alone? Not really. The Fat Free Mass Index - which is basically BMI done with just lean body mass - will almost never go above 25 for a drug free lifter. 25 also happens to be just the cut off into overweight, not obese. No drug free person is into the obese category on muscle alone.

Not from muscle alone, but he can be at the very high end of "non-obese" body fat and manage to make it there. So let's see--6' dude with weight of 225 and a FFMI of 25 would have a BF% of 19. So he would JUST edge over into the obese zone but via BMI but would be a healthy body fat. (This is absurdly unlikely but possible!) A bit more reasonable, a FFMI of 23.3% would give him a BF% of 24.5%. So he would just barely be scraping under over-fat with the level of working out that someone who spends about 10 REALLY dedicated hours of week can do.

That's not even POSSIBLE with women. LOL. Just physiologically not possible without massive amounts of steroids. With men, it's very, very distantly possible for some guys in rather contrived and absurd circumstances.

That said, it's fairly easy for guys to be in the "overweight" category with 10%-20% body fat--a nice, healthy kind of range--without drugs. And even without all that much serious training. A moderately athletic guy who does a good amount of lifting but doesn't stay trim gets there. My hubby is short, 5'8". At his biggest, he was 155 with sub-10% BF. Throw on 5, 10lbs of fat, and he'd be overweight and not over-fat.

For women, very, very few in the "overweight" BMI category aren't over-fat. In fact, MOST women at the high end of "healthy" BMI are over-fat. Among women of average build, you have to be in your EARLY 20s to actually have a healthy level of fat at the upper end of the BMI range. BMI is actually absurdly more generous to women than women's actual body composition typically support.

I partially agree. When I enter my weight alone in a bmi calculator it tells me my bmi is 42%. When I enter my measurements in a bmi calculator it tells me my bmi is 28%. That's a huge difference! I don't weigh myself as often as I use to because I do get discouraged when the numbers don't move. However I need to weigh myself periodically so I can adjust my calories as needed.

nishatay wrote: »

I partially agree. When I enter my weight alone in a bmi calculator it tells me my bmi is 42%. When I enter my measurements in a bmi calculator it tells me my bmi is 28%. That's a huge difference! I don't weigh myself as often as I use to because I do get discouraged when the numbers don't move. However I need to weigh myself periodically so I can adjust my calories as needed.

You can't enter your weight alone in a BMI calculator. It always depends on height.