em said:
I've been weighing myself daily and keeping a chart. I'm pretty visual
thinker & have some background in statistics. I'm looking at the data and
looking and looking, and its not making sense. I believe there is an unknown
factor in weight loss and the reason the scale goes up-and-down so
unpredictably, day-to-day and week-to-week, is because that unknown factor
is not being controlled. I just don't believe that water is the root cause
of "scale bobbing".
Signal noise on the scale readings includes water retained for a
wide assortment of reasons, food passing through the digestive
system, variations in lean and bone mass and on and on and on.
Almost without exception folks want to lose fat and water with
as little other loss as possible. Neither the scale nor the tape
are able to tell us our fat mass, and no matter how hard anyone
tries to control their water it doesn't actually work.
Folks try varying carb intake to trigger water loss, or cutting
salt intake or whatever. Wrestlers even take laxatives to do
spot reductions in what gets measured by the scale. None of
these efforts change the amount of stored fat so what they
really do is bounce the scale within its noise. It can be hard
to understand that every measurement (or every sort ever not
just scales) has some amount of error/noise in it. It is SO
tempting to think that the scale says so-and-so therefore that
means something about stored fat.
But the scale reading isn't completely without meaning just
because there's an error range around the number it gives
you this time. A new low is a new low, and a new high more
than some amount above a recent low is a gain, but how to
tell that range ...
Quoted message said:We all seek to control calories or carbs (or both) and
fret over the water content of broccolli.
Someone frets over the water content of broccoli? WAY
over-board on failing to understand that no matter how much
effort you put into fighting water retention it doesn't work.
Quoted message said:There is a missing factor, out
there, damnit, and when I find it I'm going to tell the world, "This is the
easiest/best/fastest way to lose weight".
When you find it you'll have a new chapter to add to the
article "Why the scale lies". Losing stuff other than fat in
the long run doesn't matter as much as losing fat. In fact,
if there were a way to tell lost lean or bone the goal would
be to increase those not reduce them.
