Tell it like it is Wednesday

There will always be people thinner than you are, and more fit than you are.

Weight loss is at least 80% diet. Focus on what you're putting in your body before you buy that gym membership.

Your body consists of bones, meat, water, fat. The scale measures all of that. Mostly, when losing weight, we care about fat. But the body is 60-65% water on average, and can be much more.

If you think the scale measures fat, and that fat changes account for multi-pound short-term swings in body weight, major frustration and misdirection will ensue.

Significant changes over a day or few are mostly water (or digestive contents on the way to being waste). Fat changes show up in weight trends over multiple weeks (over whole menstrual cycles for premenopausal women, one to the next, perhaps), and longer. (Corrollary: People who drastically and repeatedly revamp their plans based on a few days' scale results are fairly likely to fail, sooner or later, I suspect.)

Muscle-mass changes are slow and effortful, in that context: Multi weeks to months and years. If you think you gained enough muscle in your first month at the gym to mask fat loss on the scale . . . well, sadly, no. I wish. No realistic rate of muscle gain (especially in a calorie deficit) will outpace any meaningful rate of fat loss.

If you strength train sensibly, you'll gain strength much faster than you gain muscle mass, especially at first. Don't let that deceive you into thinking you've added mass. (It's neuromuscular adaptation, NMA, essentially better recruiting and using muscle fibers you already have. Strength is pretty wonderful, so this is not a diss.)

Fitness trackers don't measure calorie burn. They estimate it. They're great, in various ways, but don't mistake an estimate for a measurement. (They're really pretty bad at measuring some things, like HIIT, any intervals, any high intensity training even HISS; if they use heart rate to estimate strength training calories, or calories for very low intensity exercise like slow walking . . . that can be a problem, too.)

Heart rate monitors/trackers usually assume your maximum heart rate is age-based (often 220-age). It's not at all unusual for that age formula to be quite wrong, and it can throw off calorie estimates or fitness training.

Maximum heart rate is not a number you *shouldn't* exceed, it's a number you *can't* exceed physiologically (when in a state of health - certain health crises can send your heart rate above your healthy HR max). A healthy person, feeling good, going over age-estimated maximum heart rate with no worrisome symptoms . . . probably fine. Get your doctor's approval to exercise intensely anyway, OK?

There's a honeymoon period in weight loss: Not hungry, high energy, very motivated. Anyone with a meaningful amount of weight to lose is going to run out of honeymoon before they run out of excess fat. Plan accordingly.

Weight loss may be temporary, but for those of us (like me) with a tendency toward overweight, weight management is a lifelong endeavor. Failing to plan for that is the on-ramp to repeated weight yo-yos. Sooner or later, find sustainable habits, habits you can life with fairly happily forever. That's boring, but IMO important.

I could rant a long time here. That's long enough; I'll spare you. 🤣

The scale is not just a number. It means something. I have only been able to lose weight by weighing myself every day (same time) Improving my eating habits so that the numbers go down. All this while continuing a lifting/cardio routine. I followed bad advice fo years “don’t pay attention to the scale”… not really true.