Hey friend,
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Lesson #2: Stop Weighing In At The Gym
This is a call out to all of you gym-goers who step on the scale at the gym.
Whether you weigh yourself before your workout or afterwards, it doesn’t matter. Stop weighing in at the gym.
There are just too many downsides to it and you’ll likely end up with unreliable and discouraging data.
The time of day that you weigh in matters. And even if you arrive at the gym at the same time each day your body weight can fluctuate based on a number of different factors including your food and fluid intake and your activity levels prior to weighing in.
If you’re weighing yourself after your workout the amount of cell swelling and inflammation will change depending on the specific workout, resulting in potentially pounds of weight fluctuations.
If you’re wearing clothing while you weigh in at the gym this can significantly skew your data.
If you’re mixing and matching your scale from home with the scale at the gym the calibration and accuracy of the two different scales will be significantly different.
All of this is to say that there’s a psychological impact to seeing large fluctuations in your body weight on a regular basis. I’m not saying that you can account for this entirely all the time and you’ll have to get used to the fact that your weight will fluctuate sometimes. Especially if you’ve had a particularly high calorie and high sodium meal, or a really hard workout compared to normal.
But if you’re weighing in at the gym, you’re probably adding to this psychological burden.
Here’s what you should do instead.
Wake up in the morning and go to the bathroom. Step on the scale with no clothing on. Record the data. Do this a few times each week and only look at your weekly averages to determine the direction that your body weight is moving.
Use this data along with your other measurements of progress, which might include progress photos, circumference measurements, or mirror checks, to get an idea if you’re on your way to achieving your body composition goals.