Inches Over Pounds
As you progress in your training, you may notice that your clothes are fitting more loosely, but the scale hasn’t moved at all—or maybe it’s even gone up!
This can be very unnerving, especially since many of us have been conditioned to think that the number on the scale determines our level of fitness.
But your body weight is just one of many factors that indicate our level of fitness and even fat loss.
When you reach this point where the scale isn’t moving, but your clothes are getting looser, rest assured that you are making progress!
It’s just at this point, body weight isn’t a good number to look at to measure this progress. Instead, you’ll want to look at body fat percentage and muscle percentage.
The method I use to help my clients achieve long term and sustainable fat loss is to increase daily activity, clean up the diet, and build muscle.
Getting more active allows your body to burn more calories.
Cleaning up the diet ensure you’re eating the right amount of calories (so you’re not storing extra calories as body fat).
Building more muscle boosts the metabolism so that your daily calorie burn goes up over time. This will help you avoid hitting the dreaded weight loss plateau.
For many of my clients they may see initially a dramatic change in their weight in the first few weeks of training.
But many of my clients eventually reach a point where the scale seems to tell a different story than what they’re seeing in the mirror.
“How is my weight not moving?!! My pants are literally falling off!!”
What’s happened in the body at this point is that the amount of lean muscle tissue that you’re building is keeping pace with the amount of body fat you’re burning.
Muscle take up way less space in the body than body fat:
The half-pound of fat you may have lost in the last two weeks has been replaced by a half-pound of muscle. The reason you feel smaller—despite weighing the same—is that muscle is a much more dense and compact tissue than fat.
So if you’ve reached a point where you seem to be getting trimmer, but the scale isn’t moving—or maybe it’s even going up—you may want to stop looking at bodyweight as an indicator of your fitness progress. Instead look at body fat percentage and muscle percentage.
The half-pound of fat you may have lost in the last two weeks has been replaced by a half-pound of muscle. The reason you feel smaller—despite weighing the same—is that muscle is a much more dense and compact tissue than fat.
So if you’ve reached a point where you seem to be getting trimmer, but the scale isn’t moving—or maybe it’s even going up—you may want to stop looking at bodyweight as an indicator of your fitness progress. Instead look at body fat percentage and muscle percentage.
There are a lot of moderately priced scales on the market that will measure your body fat and muscle percentages. I really like my body composition scale by GreaterGoods, but there are tons of others as well.
You can also just use a good old fashioned tape measure at this point to track your progress—as you get more fit, you should see belly fat reduced in the waist and other areas that our bodies tend to store fat.
If you are one of my clients using the Trainerize app, you can use the Body Stats feature to record your measurements. The app will walk you through step by step taking measurements in the major areas of the body where we like to store fat—like the belly, the thighs, and underarms.
In the Trainerize app, just hit the plus button at the bottom right of your screen, then select “Body Stats.” Then enter your measurements into the next section.
So there’s really no reason to panic if you see the scale isn’t moving!
Remember—body weight is just one measurement of progress.
As you build more muscle in the future, you may even see the scale number begin to go up—even if you don’t see much change in your actual body size.
Muscle is an extremely dense muscle tissue, and we can pack a lot of it into a small space!
Certain styles of training (hypertrophy training, for example) can lend themselves towards increasing the actual size of the muscles so that they take up more space. However for many people, you don’t really see much of a change in muscle size even as you get stronger (this can be extremely frustrating for people who want to see bigger muscles, i.e., “hardgainers”).
As you advance in your training, try to keep in mind that there are many measurements of progress beyond the number on the scale—not only changes in body composition (body fat percentage vs. muscle percentage), but also in performance.
You know you’re making progress if you’re able to add more weight to your strength training exercises, or perform more repetitions, move faster, or maintain your balance and form better.
The scale isn’t everything!
About the Author
Jayd Harrison is a personal trainer and content creator. She helps people to build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with her online coaching programs and social media content. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch and follow on social media.
