It’s tempting to pull out the scales and weigh yourself often when you’re on a diet, if for no other reason than you want to see the results of your efforts in a lower number on the scales. But The Think Bay is asking you to think twice before getting too obsessed about what your scales say.
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For one thing, your weight can vary by ounces and even more than a couple pounds every day, depending on what you’ve eaten and how well your digestive system is working. How much sleep you’ve had and how much you’ve had to drink can make a big difference too. That’s why how you feel and look, and whether the choices you’re making are positive ones, are far more important than what those numbers on the scale are reading for the moment.
It can be a struggle to separate fitness fact from fiction, so this advice to ignore your scales is just a small reminder to keep your goals in mind and stumbling blocks behind as you proceed on your weight loss journey. For example, another downer when it comes to dieting is when somebody comes up and says a sluggish metabolism is your whole weight problem.
Yes, metabolism is important — but it’s important no matter what you weigh. The real truth is age-related weight gain has far more to do with your diet and activity level than your metabolism, and one of the best ways to avoid age-related weight gain is to exercise regularly. That said, if you think your metabolism is stalled, you might consider inflammation as a contributing factor, and choose foods that can reduce inflammation.
By so doing you not only address inflammation, but at the same time enhance both your brain function and your body’s weight, as foods you would eliminate do contribute to both weight gain and inflammation. For example, sugar and processed foods are something you need to avoid to fight inflammation and help your body lose pounds.
Another dieting falsehood you may run into is the lie that a low-fat diet is the healthiest way to live, and a full-fat diet will kill you. The truth is fat is important for our health, and it must be the right kind — and the right kind is NOT a reduced- or low-fat diet. Unfortunately, to this day, the American Heart Association and the dietary guidelines for Americans recommend we consume at least 5 to 10 percent of our calories as processed omega-6 fats which are among the most harmful when consumed in excess.
The real truth is that eating real foods, including healthy fats like those you would eat on a ketogenic diet, will help you lose weight and get and stay healthy. Also remember that muscle weighs more than fat, so if you’re exercising and strength-training at the same time that you’re dieting, the scales may even say you’ve gained weight, even though you look and feel smaller.