Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 59: Why you NEED to stop reacting to spikes on the scales
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I want to talk a little bit about something that popped up this week, which is this idea of reactivity to the scales. So specifically what this was, was an instance where someone had been doing really quite well, cracking on with things nicely, and they'd actually had three, four days in a row where they had absolutely nailed everything. Their steps were higher than normal. Their calories were, if anything, under their target. the protein was spot on, they'd exercised, I think actually three consecutive days, but the scales hadn't dropped. And of course, they did the classic thing that can happen to just about anyone at some point, because you get into that mentality where you think, well, the scales aren't dropping, so screw it. If they're not dropping, I might as well eat this food, or I might as well indulge myself, or I might as well screw the diet, that kind of screw it moment that people have. Now, of course, The problem with that is that a lot of the time weight loss is very much a lagging measure. one of things I've experienced a lot of is sometimes even quite relatively extreme examples where like I did a 25 kilometre trail run and the next day my weight spiked up. Now I expended a lot more calories than I ate that day and I was very active and I'm not quite sure what my step count was because it was a while ago but obviously it would have been really, really high. Now, it'd be really, really easy for me to then step on those skills the next morning and think, for God sakes, why has that happened? And get really, really frustrated and get really upset at it. But of course, in reality, it's just a lagging measure, right? It's not that I haven't been in a bigger calorie deficit on that particular day or it wasn't like that particular person wasn't in a calorie deficit over those three, four days. and wasn't losing body fat. It's simply that weight fluctuates for lots of reasons. And very often what you see in real life is not a linear drop. You don't see someone losing an average of 0.7 kilos a week, which means they're losing 0.1 kilos every single day. That's actually exceptionally rare. It's much more likely that you see two days weight goes slightly up, then a day it drops half a kilo, then a couple of days it maybe, or a day it kind of spikes up and then it drops again. Like that type of thing is much more normal. And actually, when you look at the average weight across the course of the week, so you take your seven weigh-ins from week one, your seven weigh-ins from week two, very often what you see is a clear downward trend and you think, great, actually we're progressing really nicely. But you could be thrown off by those, as in that example, someone who smashed it for three or four days and then got fed up, even although they were smashing it, even although they were doing absolutely everything right, and they reacted. Now, The reason that person reacted probably like in any situation, it's multiple factors, right? They'd had really, really poor sleep for a few days, lots going on, just really busy and just feeling really knackered. And they probably let it get in their head a little bit in a way that they wouldn't normally. So they had that kind of moment. But it's a good example of if you let that get in your head, it throws you off. Now, what was really interesting about this, right? is what that resulted in was a day of much higher calories than normal. So a significant swing up of calories, maybe I think an extra 13, 1400 above the target. So quite a chunk, right? So what would you expect if they did that, right? You on a Wednesday have a higher than normal weigh in, you're really frustrated by it. So you see a spike on the scales. Sorry, you see a spike in the scale. So you're really frustrated by it. So you then react and you overeat that day. What would you expect the next day on the Thursday? Well, you'd probably expect weight to spike again, except it didn't. It actually was just about the same. It was a very, very minor, I think it increased by 0.1. Now we've eaten an extra 1,400 calories, so we're thinking, well, hold on, what's going on there? We've had a ton more calories and weight's barely moved. Well, likely as not, if they'd not had those additional 1,400 calories, they would have seen that drop, that lagging effect I've been talking about was right there. It might have been. that for those last three days, nothing was happening on the scales, nothing was happening. For Thursday, it was due to drop, but because they reacted, then they ended up kind of just at the same weight roughly they were the day before when it spiked. So it's a perfect example of, it's almost like, you know, that round the corner effect of like a lot of the time the next win is just round the corner and what you need to do is stay the course and not be swung off by it or so frustrated by it because it is really easy to do that. It's really easy to get. pissed off or annoyed at it, react to it, and then actually you're doing yourself out of progress. And not only that, in that situation that person was doing bloody brilliantly, but it was just a few days of kind of like nailing it down without a bit of weight loss that caused that frustration. And of course that doesn't mean anything because we know that if your steps are in a good place and you're moving lots and you're exercising lots and you're nailing your calories, we know you're in a calorie deficit. So there's not an issue there. We can see that body fat is clearly going to be dropping. but it could be that water retention's a little bit higher, there's more food in your digestive tract, all these other effects that are just holding your weight up even just that little bit longer before it drops away. And when you have that perspective, it starts to help you of shift away from that reaction to, screw it, I've had four good days, the scales haven't dropped, I'm so annoyed, and blah, blah. And actually, the truth is, a little bit of blunt truth in it, is that we can't do that. If you're in a weight loss phase and you react to every single fluctuation, then we're never gonna get anywhere. Now, This person's never done that before, it's just a moment and I think probably compounded by other things going on, right? I like Sleeps a Great example of that. But it's a perfect example of like, you're doing everything right, you just stay the course. And no doubt, they would have seen a big drop either on that Thursday or the Friday, a couple of days later on the scales and then felt really motivated by it. So this is why when I talk about not reacting to the scales, it's something I stress so heavily because well, it's rather impactful, right? So that's something I just wanted to kind of touch on, but. That's a nice short, simple one for today. I will love you and leave you with that and I hope you have a great day.