Being on a diet usually leads to fixation on the scale.

We are happy when it goes down, unhappy when it goes up, frustrated when it stays the same. (The truth is, any time it stays the same, we are winning, but few of us see it that way when we’re immersed in the struggle of dieting off excess weight.)

Here are some basic facts. The body is made up of fat and non-fat (lean) tissue – this includes bone, muscle, organ tissue, interstitial and connective tissue. All of this lean tissue is mostly water – 73.2%.

If you weigh 200 and you have 35% body fat, then you have 130 pounds of lean tissue and you are about 95 pounds of water. A gallon of water weighs 8 lbs. The average human body contains almost 12 gallons of water.

Most diets (especially Atkins and high protein) cause the body to lose water quite rapidly. In an attempt to deal with the excessive protein waste which occurs during a diet, the kidneys call forth large amounts of water from the muscles, cells, etc. in an attempt to rid the body of poisonous ketones. Then, the body fights to put that water back into the body to balance its electrolytes!

All this causes a shift on the scale but may not indicate ANY fat loss. It’s a false reading. Most “success” we hear about on a diet is water loss… and has NOTHING to do with burning FAT.

Don’t be fooled by the number on the scale. Concentrate on burning fat and make sure to preserve all the important, vital elements of the body. Rapid weight loss also burns some very valuable elements of the body, including muscle, that no one can afford to lose!

For women, the scale fluctuates with hormonal shifts and chemical interactions too. If you were to weigh yourself continually, every day, for months and months, you’d actually find that you have a “range of weight.” These numbers might be 165-169 for months, then, after changing your behaviors and habits, you might notice a new range of 159-164 for a while. Again, numbers on the scale aren’t an accurate reflection of fat content within the body.

If you judge yourself harshly when you see 169 on the scale, it’ll be almost impossible to do the work necessary to get into the 159 range.

Even if, hypothetically, a body actually burned a pound of fat in one day (which is almost impossible to do), it would take 10 days to clear the waste products from that process. This is why you can make positive changes and sometimes see the scale go up–the body is calling in water and fluids to aid in waste elimination on a cellular level.

Yet, if you eat because you see this change on the scale, you reverse the good you’ve accomplished!

The scale is but one tool, and it cannot adequately communicate what is happening within the body on a cellular level.

It also cannot say anything about you or your worthiness, unless you let it!