Know What To Do When The Scale Won't Budge - A Personal Trainer's Perspective

thefitbusiness
Oct 8, 2014
7 min read

Before you begin reading through this article, MAKE SURE you can answer an unwavering “YES” to each of these questions…

Are you are working consistently (the equivalent of 30 mins 5 days per week at light to moderate intensity)? - if not, start with 2 days of strength training and 3 days of intense cardio.
Are you eating 5 meals a day and staying in your needed caloric range with healthy and balanced macros? - if not, find out how many calories you need, meal plans, and more by clicking here.
Are you consuming half your bodyweight (in ounces) of water each day? – Find out more about why water is crucial to muscle gain and subsequent fat loss by clicking here.

So you can safely answer Yes! To each question above, it’s been longer than 2 weeks, and you still haven’t seen that scale budge? Don’t worry you are not being punished for something that is out of your control. There are so many factors that affect the number on the scale that it is often even daunting for an experienced personal trainer let alone anyone without years of training and education in exercise science.

Today, I am going to try to educate you on the most common physiologic responses of the body when a person begins exercising. I see these things often as a personal trainer, and the first thing I do is educate my client that the number on the scale really doesn’t matter all that much…

"The first thing I do

is educate my client

that the number on the

scale really doesn’t

matter all that much…"

Now I understand as a professional that I’ve got some work ahead of me to either A.) Help you understand that statement if you’ve never heard it before, or B.) Further explain why you keep hearing this statement from people, but you’ve never fully understood why…

My Philosophy: The More

I Can Teach You,

The More Tools You’ll Have

To Win This Battle.

I’m going to further explain how your weight fluctuates and is affected by the following factors:

Fat
Muscle
Stomach Content & Water
Carbohydrates
Sodium & Creatine
Stress

Fat:

Fat is the obvious suspect, but often gets wrongfully accused when you don’t see the numbers dropping on the scale. Fat is lost and gained at a moderate pace, and can be lost in larger numbers when you first begin versus 6 months into exercising. For example, If you have a significant amount of weight to lose then you may be able to drop 3-4 pounds a week in the first few weeks. This amount is still considered extreme regardless of your perceptions from mainstream media such as The Biggest Loser. That show should be called The Biggest Joke. Trust me, I’ve trained a contestant, and the show is not real. Sorry for the spoiler. This is due to a factor called the Shock Factor, and it looks like this:

As you can see from the graph above, The effort needed to lose that same 2 lbs in month seven is nearly 5x the effort it took to lose 2 lbs in week 2. So… If you are in the later months of training and can’t see that scale move – it might be time to up the intensity in order to get out of your plateau.

Let’s look at an alternative while we are on the topic of fat. One measly pound of fat can only be lost per week if you A.) burn 3500 calories exercising AND you are eating your Basal Metabolic Rate of calories (the number of calories needed to maintain your bodyweight) or B.) Do not exercise and cut 3500 calories per week (500 per day) from your BMR. If you think about it, it’s not that hard to take in an extra 500 calories per day over your BMR… So be careful what you are eating, monitor your caloric intake, and be sure to always be in deficit. It always comes down to calories in versus calories out.

Let me play the devil’s advocate here: Let’s just say neither of the two examples above apply to you. You are indeed eating right and you aren’t in a plateau – yet the scale is still jumping all over the place and you aren’t seeing consistent weight loss? For you – Fat is not the major culprit. Something else is going on.

Muscle:

Unlike Fat, Muscle is gained and lost at slower rates for most people. If you are on a fat loss program, muscle gain will be pretty slow, however, muscle loss can happen surprisingly fast. Let me give you an example: In 2009, I took on a new client, let’s call her Sallie. Sallie came to me after watching her weight yo-yo for the past 5 years. It all started with an extreme diet …you guessed it – 5 years ago. She cut her calories down to dangerously low levels and managed to lose 50lbs. That started a vicious cycle of her body thinking she was starving it. It consumed her muscle for energy and to keep her alive. She was unaware of this happening and was ecstatic with her fast weight loss as you could imagine. 99% of the diets out there follow this principle, and if you are on a “diet” make sure you read this carefully. Over the 5 years after her first crash diet, Sallie’s weight fluctuated drastically as she would diet and then quit, gain the weight back with a vengeance, diet and then quit… sound familiar? All she had managed to do was deplete her lean muscle stores allowing fat to store more readily and easily on the body. She desperately needed lean muscle to stop the cycle.

If you are dieting & only

Doing cardio, stop immediately!

Get help balancing your meals

& start lifting weights

SIGNIFICANT WEIGHTS!

Stomach Content & Water:

Besides actual changes in fat and muscle, the food eaten from day to day can cause big swings in your weight as well, but it’s perfectly natural. I only tell you tis so that you can keep it in mind when stepping on the scale.

It’s easy to overlook, but simply having more food in the gut (undigested or what’s left after digestion) adds to your weight. Drinking only protein shakes will keep stomach content minimal, while lots of fibrous veggies and hearty servings of meat (which is recommended), will have you carrying much more “non-energy” food components that press down on the scale.

This goes for water as well. If you chug a liter of water, you’ll weigh 2-3 pounds heavier just from the sheer fact of that liquid sitting in their stomach. It’s best to weigh (naked) in the morning, afteryou’ve used the restroom but before eating.

Carbohydrates:

Carbs are especially good at messing with your weight for a couple of reasons:

Carbs are stored in the muscle and weigh more than twice that of a fat calorie.
When stored in the muscle, they bring in 3x their weight in water.

Carbs are great! We can’t live without them, and I am in no way trying to feed the “carbs are the enemy” machine. Again, just trying to educate you. If you had spaghetti last night – You’re gonna be a few pounds heavier today!

Sodium & Creatine/ Krealkylin:

Similar to carbs, taking in sodium or creatine causes a retention of water adding weight to that scale. Unlike carbohydrates, your body will respond based of the average of your habitual intake. So if you normally take in 1500mg of sodium, but you shamelessly polish off a bag of pretzels, your weight may increase temporarily due to the water retention. Your body does that to balance the affects that the salt has on your blood pressure.

Creatine or Krealkylin is a supplement usually taken by new lifters because it is the only supplement proven to increase strength and staying power in the gym. If you are trying to lean out/ get stronger, and begin taking this supplement, be ready for the 2-3 lbs of water that comes with it.

Stress:

This is easily the most frustrating factor, as it’s incredibly hard to measure, and can stall your weight loss for several weeks. Cortisol causes water retention meaning that elevated levels of it can mask fat loss.

It just so happens that dieting and exercise both increase cortisol (which you would think would be a bad thing, but it’s not. Short bursts of cortisol are good for the body and fat loss. It’s the long staying, consistent presence of cortisol that begins to trigger fat storage. Be careful not to over-train to prevent this as well)

As I mention before, typically a bigger calorie deficit and too much cardio will increase cortisol to the point where weight loss becomes erratic and unpredictable. But things like lack of sleep, big lifestyle stresses, and injuries can also raise cortisol. If you suspect this is the problem for you, the solution is easy: remove the stress.

Well, maybe not easy, but simple.

Reduce the calorie deficit (aka add more calories back to your day gradually increasing the deficit over time, swap all that cardio for some lifting sessions, and chill out and get some sleep. If cortisol is the culprit, these changes should help you drop that extra water and show your true weight.

Education Goes a Long Way:

Remember, your weight can fluctuate 5-10 lbs easily from the factors above. Control these factors and be patient, and you are sure to see AWESOME Results! Also, I encourage you to use other tools for measuring your progress. I rarely use weight when tracking my clients’ progress, but I do use these items as they are much more reliable and encouraging:

Body Fat Percentage
Circumference measurements
Progress pictures
Performance on your lifts/ increasing your weights
Energy levels and journal entries
Food Logs

Lastly, If you must record your weight, I suggest you use my method of progressed averages. Progressed Averages means average all of your weigh ins together along with your current weigh in in order to get the big picture. This alleviates any fluctuations you may be experiencing and allows you to see the gradual loss. There’s actually an app called Happy Scale that will do this for you.

Jess Wiliams NASM CPT CES PES

Owner: Carolina Corrective Therapy & Personal Training