Why Your Scale Keeps Fluctuating

This is for those of you who have struggled with fat loss. Especially for those of you that have been dialed in with nutrition, have been strength training, getting your cardio in and seem to be doing absolutely everything right. Still, your weight isn’t going down the way you thought it would, or maybe it’s even going up.

Studies have shown that weight fluctuations are one of the biggest reasons for people who quit their weight loss efforts. People often throw in the towel because of stress and anxiety from scale fluctuations and the number shown on the scale not being where they expected. Today I am going to explain to you why you have to emotionally detach from the scale and only use it as a tool to measure data over long periods of time. It should absolutely not dictate the outlook you have upon yourself and isn’t to be trusted every day!

When you measure progress day to day your weight WILL go up and down but when you measure progress over the long term, you will notice that the trend is going downward (as long as you’ve been in a consistent calorie deficit) and that is what matters. Here is why your scale fluctuates so much, and why fat loss is never a linear process.

2. Carbohydrates- if you eat more carbs than you typically eat in a day your weight may also spike due to your body holding onto more water. Carbs work like a sponge in the sense that they also absorb and withhold water in the body. On the contrary, if you eat less carbs than normal your body will flush out a lot of water and you will weigh less.

*This is very important to note why the Keto diet is extremely popular and people believe it is so successful. On the Keto diet, people lose weight rapidly because they’ve almost eliminated carbs from their diet completely (or have tried to keep them very low below 30 grams a day). When you have removed carbohydrates your body flushes out so much water and weight drops substantially. What happens frequently in the keto diet is that weight loss comes to a halt and people plateau because they don’t have much more water to lose and at that point the only way they will lose more weight is from fat loss, which is a much slower process.

3.) If You Eat Later or Later Than Usual- and weigh yourself at the same time the following day, you will have more mass in you that hasn’t been digested in your gut and you will weigh more the next day. Similarly, if you weigh in earlier than usual you will weigh in more the next day because you’re fuller than you’d be if you weighed yourself later in the day.

4.) Bowel Movements- Sometimes when you weigh more than usual you just have to go poop and it’s as simple as that!

5.) Medications- Certain medications may cause you to gain weight because they cause you to retain more water than normal.

6.) Heavy Lift Day- When you lift weights your body is breaking down muscle, it’s literally tearing apart (in a good way, don’t be alarmed). After you break the muscle down it absorbs lots of nutrients to repair and rebuild them, again similar to our sponge analogy. Ultimately, from this process you may weigh more the next day. Especially when you hit a lower day and are targeting the largest muscles in the body like your glutes and quadriceps.

7.) Stress- when you are stressed and cortisol goes up, a lot of the time your body will tighten up and also hold onto water. On days you are comfortable and relaxed your body will loosen up and flush more water out and you will weigh less. This is another major reason why people will weigh less when they are reverse dieting. Reverse dieting simply means to add back some calories while continuing to be in a calorie deficit. So many people will add calories back and their weight will drop and they will be confused thinking that the reason is because they were eating too little and their metabolism was affected and all of these different reasons. In reality, their bodies were just a little bit more stressed while they were eating in the larger calorie deficit and when they added some calories back, while still being in a deficit, they relaxed a little bit and probably flushed out some more water impacting their scale weight. If they had stuck with the original calorie deficit they had they would have eventually had the same drop happen.

Mostly everyone in the world who wants to lose weight wants it to go down every single day and for their progress to be linear but that just isn’t the reality of how it is going to go because of all the reasons I’ve explained. It is completely normal to experience weight fluctuations of 1–2% of total body weight. The unfortunate truth is that so many people become so fixated and discouraged from the number on the scale, even when they are doing everything right that they quit and go in “fuck it mode” and stop the progress they were making. If they had just kept going and doing what they were doing, they would have seen that inevitable drop in scale weight. Many people become motivated and dial in their nutrition and exercise for a week and see some initial progress and feedback from the scale and then the following week they won’t see any change and they’ll plateau. This plateau can last for 1, 2, 3, 4 days, even a week or so and the scale may not change. All you need to realize is that if you KNOW for sure you are in a calorie deficit to keep doing what you’re doing and trust the process and realize that the scale will go down because it’s inevitable. If it’s a little over two weeks and still nothing is changing then at that point you can look into increasing daily energy expenditure or decreasing calorie intake slightly. This process and trend will continue to happen time after time, that is why it’s so important to weigh yourself each day. You can input your daily weigh ins into an excel spreadsheet or a weigh in app and see the trends that your weight loss looks like. At a certain point you can actually predict when you are going to plateau or have a spike in scale weight gain.

To summarize, the most important thing to look at is over the course of the month, what is the trend and direction of your average scale weight. If your weight randomly spikes up one day or multiple days, it doesn’t mean you are gaining fat! Look at your salt intake, carbohydrate intake, the times you are eating and times you’re weighing in, look at your stress levels objectively, think about the last time you peed or popped, think about your weight lifting sessions and how intense it was on your muscles. Look at all of these factors and analyze because if you know you’re in a calorie deficit and the weight is fluctuating, these are almost always the reasons why that is. And lastly, view and treat the scale for what it is and what it shows you and that is purely data. If you weigh yourself each day with indifference and no emotional attachment to what the number shows than you will be able to calmly and confidently move through the day knowing that you are the only thing who can dictate your peace of mind and happiness, not some number that shows up on the screen that can be skewed by a plethora of reasons. Do you want to be in control of the way you perceive the world or have a scale in charge of it for you? The Choice Is Yours.

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