Welcome to Day Seven and the end of your first week!
Sunday can often be a day that everything “falls apart”.
This is usually because of what happened on Saturday…
But not because Saturday was actually that bad.
But people often worry about the impact of what happened on Saturday, so they weigh themselves first thing on Sunday morning… and how they respond to that information is usually the biggest problem.
The scale doesn’t actually measure fat.
People see fluctuations from day to day on the scale, a pound down, a pound back up, and think this means they are gaining and losing fat.
Trying to analyse scale weight fluctuations over the short term will drive you mad. They don’t have anything to do with fat. There is much more going on that influences your weight than changes in your body fat levels.
The main two things that influence the scale reading are water and food.
Your body changes weight all the time as you eat, drink and go to the toilet.
If you have a couple of lower carb days and spend time in a calorie deficit, you’ll likely drop some water that your body is storing. You’ll also likely have less food in your digestive tract.
The scale shows some progress. This feels great! But it’s not actually measuring that fat loss has happened!
Then what happens when you eat a pizza on Saturday?
The scale goes back up, sometimes by quite a lot!
But this is just because you’re comparing yourself under two completely different scenarios.
One: Holding water and still holding onto all the food you ate the day before.
Vs. Not holding water, and not much food inside you!
Glycogen
I touched on this yesterday. Glycogen is energy stored in your liver and muscles. It adds a few pounds to your weight. When you go into a calorie deficit, you’ll deplete these stores in the first couple of weeks. That’s why you see rapid progress on the scale at the beginning – and it eventually slows down considerably.
As soon as you up your carbohydrate (clue: hydrate is in the name) intake, you will refill your glycogen stores. Every gram of glycogen comes with 4 grams of water. Hello scale weight gain! It doesn’t matter!
Here’s what you should do: Stop weighing yourself!
Starvation Mode…
Can you be eating “too little to lose fat”?
In a word: No.
If you’re in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight.
There are things that can mask that progress (see water/food weight and glycogen above).
But you will lose weight if you’re in a calorie deficit. So if you’re not seeing that progress, firstly give it a few days/weeks and wait. If you’re still not seeing progress, then you’re not in a calorie deficit.
Why am I not in a calorie deficit?
It can be hard to take responsibility of this and admit “I’m eating too much to lose fat”, but this is a problem that a lot of people face.
Here’s where people often go wrong:
- Not tracking calories from oil (there are loads of calories in cooking oils)
- Not tracking calories from spreads and condiments.
- Not tracking everything they’re eating – sneaky bites here and there.
- Not tracking accurately enough – eyeballing portions and estimating – and getting it wrong.
- Weighing foods cooked when they should be weighed raw, or vice versa.
- Thinking the odd “cheat day” shouldn’t be having much impact – but it is erasing their hard work on the other days.
Your Actions for Today
As today is the end of the week, it’s time to reflect. Ask yourself these questions and give yourself a point for each one if you’ve done it.
- Have I tracked all of my meals this week?
- Have I hit my calorie goals this week?
- Am I tracking protein and hit that goal this week too?
- Have I done my 3 workouts this week?
Post your score out of 4 on the Facebook post for today!
See you again tomorrow (when it’s time to do Workout B again).