The Scale And The Calipers Can Lie To You
Last Update On December 3, 2011
The scale has always been a popular way to “control your weight”. While the use of scales can be useful most people end up being trapped by it.
Why?
It's simple the scale just tells you how much you weight but it does not tell you one single thing about your body composition. In other words you can be 200 pounds and muscular and 200 pounds and fat. There is a big difference but the scale cannot make it.
I would say that weighting yourself is a waste of time unless you are preparing to “get in shape” for your weight class or something like that. For example after my first bulking phase which is one of the most stupid things I've ever done I got from 150 pounds to 195 in eight months. Of course I've gained a lots of fat and water weight. The total amount of gained muscle mass was around 15-17 pounds while the rest 27-8 pounds were fat and water. Keep in mind that before that I've never done any kind of serious training so gaining 20 pounds of muscle is not impossible when you keep in mind that I gained 20 pounds of pure fat as well. This was one of the most stupid things I've done in my training career. I was waiting for the scale to show 2 pounds more almost every week and I was thinking that it was all muscle. Well, it wasn't. I was too close minded to admit that I was getting fat. The mirror was telling the truth however. I wasn't seeing that much muscle but the gut was there.
According to my experience you can gain 15-25 pounds of muscle during your first year if you start underweight and than your are looking at less than half of that each year. Actually a gain of 7-8 pounds muscle a year is a GOOD gain after your “newbie” gains are over. That makes less than one pound of muscle a month. In other words unless you are training for sumo using the scale to weight yourself every week or even month is pointless. Just take some pictures and look in the mirror. Ask the people around you. Be honest.
At the same time I'm not a fan of calipers. They lie too. The Rippetoe boy Zack Evetts is a perfect example. I explain his case in details here. Rippetoe used some fancy calipers in order to test his LBM and the results shewed - 191 pounds of LBM (lean body mass - everything except fat). However for those who don't know 190 of LBM takes years to achieve and the poor boy Zack Evetts is far, far from it. Just look at the picture.
Part of that has something to do with tremendous amount of water and glycogen weight gained while you are on severely heavy bulking diet such as GOMAD. Water and glycogen are technically LBM as well but THEY ARE NOT MUSCLE MASS. I can gain 5 pounds of water if I wanted to in two days but I can lose it in three as well. It's bullshit and does nothing for you.
People have become such slaves to those “technologies” that they don't believe their eyes no more. I'm telling you that if you gain even 2 pounds of muscle you will see it in the mirror. The same does not stay true for fat however. Some people have extremely well spread fat storage. In other words the fat cells are placed all over their body and the person does not look fat even thought he/she may be over 20% BF which is a lot.
Fuck the scale. If you don't like what you see in the mirror does it matter how much you weight?
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