Did you know that the barometric pressure or high ocean tides can influence the numbers you see on your scale? Or that stress can make your body refuse to lose weight?
I’m sure you’ve had times when it seemed as though your scale had gone crazy. Some days, for absolutely no reason, your scale number will bounce around like a ping-pong ball. Or your weight will suddenly drop several pounds when you haven’t changed anything in your routine.
Other times, the scale will act stuck or arbitrarily show a higher weight than the day before. Occasionally, in spite of your best efforts, the scale will just do whatever it wants.
When your scale gives you a strange readout, remind yourself to be patient and wait it out. Within a few days or perhaps a week, your body will settle down, and you’ll see a more accurate measurement of your weight.
Here are 14 factors that can affect what your scale says.
Some are things you can change to get more accurate scale readings. But many of them are totally out of your control. Whenever your scale seems to defy logic and show numbers that don’t make sense, consider whether your body might be reacting to one or more of these issues.
Factors with Lots of Control
1. Time of day
You’ll always get the most accurate and consistent scale readings with an early-morning weigh-in, before eating or drinking anything. Weighing late in the day can show numbers that are two to four pounds higher than a morning reading.
2. Water intake
Drinking lots of water doesn’t actually improve weight loss. But it does increase your body’s efficiency and it helps remove the byproducts of fat metabolism. Because water intake affects your body’s fluid levels, it may help the scale move more consistently.
When you don’t drink enough water, you can become dehydrated, which forces your body to retain fluids as a way of protecting itself. Surprisingly, this can show up on the scale as an increase in your weight!
3. Routine exercise
During the initial recovery phase after an exercise session, your muscles pull in water to help them recover. Sometimes this spills over into the next day or two. You may notice a higher reading on the scale the day after you’ve done a vigorous walk, bike ride, or exercise class.
4. Extra-hard exercise
In spite of what you’ve seen on popular weight-loss TV shows, killer levels of exercise don’t always result in a drop on the scale.
When you push yourself extremely hard at the same time you drastically cut calories, your body protects itself by conserving resources, including fat stores.
If you notice your scale number either getting stuck or going up after a series of hard workouts, decrease your exercise intensity for a week or two and see if that helps budge the reading on the scale.
5. Stress
High levels of stress keep your body on alert in case it needs to suddenly jump into battle. To stay prepared, it protects itself by holding onto every last resource it can find. This translates into fluid retention and unwillingness to release fat stores.
If your weight appears to be stuck, consider whether you are going through a high-stress time. Unfortunately, any time you’re dealing with intense stress, you may have difficulty losing weight.
Factors with Some Level of Control
6. Travel
As you already know, most people retain fluids after any type of travel, including bus or train as well as airline trips. Changes in atmospheric pressure or even local weather conditions can affect scale readings by several pounds in a day.
While this is especially noticeable after an airplane trip, a driving vacation can result in a similar problem. When you ride in a car for a long time, blood tends to pool in your lower legs. Eventually, this causes fluid retention and an increase in your scale number.
7. Hormone changes
Along with making you feel bloated or puffy, PMS, menopause and other hormone fluctuations can cause fluid retention lasting seven to ten days. Some women continue to retain fluid the first few days of their periods, keeping the scale reading artificially high.
8. Changes in muscle mass
Here’s a common myth—muscle weighs more than fat, so that must be why the scale is up. This is partly true because, over time, building more muscle and improving strength does affect body weight. But it takes several months of consistent exercise before you’ll see weight changes caused by an increase in muscle mass.
When you challenge your muscles with strength training, your body pulls extra water into the cells. Initially, this can show scale changes that are unrelated to your fat stores.
9. Extreme temperatures
In hot, humid weather, your body tends to puff up and hold extra fluids. To check this out, turn your rings on a hot, muggy afternoon and notice how puffy your fingers have become.
10. Barometric pressure
When the barometric pressure drops, such as when a storm is approaching, your body may retain fluids more than usual. If you live near the ocean, you may notice a similar effect during times when the tides are high or fluctuating a lot. These weather-related issues are especially common for individuals with arthritis or other conditions that respond to weather changes.
Factors with Almost No Control
11. Illness
When your body is fighting an illness, it protects itself by conserving resources until you feel better. A bad cold or the flu can temporarily slow your weight loss while your body attempts to recover and repair itself.
If you have the stomach flu or other conditions that causes vomiting or diarrhea, your body will in your scale number, you’re not getting an accurate picture of changes to your fat stores.
12. Medications
Many types of medications affect how your body metabolizes fat stores. In fact, blood pressure or diabetes medications can cause your body to become very stubborn, making weight loss difficult.
Any time you take antibiotics or do asthma treatments, your system may temporarily hold on to weight. When your body decides that it’s safe to release extra weight again, your progress will improve.
13. Chronic physical conditions
Long-term treatments for conditions such as diabetes, arthritis and lung problems can cause a range of frustrating side effects. With many of these health issues, it’s common to experience weight gain or the inability to lose weight in spite of being faithful to following your diet.
Steroid medications nearly always cause weight gain as well as make it difficult to lose weight. Many treatments for cancer or heart conditions are also potential culprits in the dreaded weight gain.
14. Surgery or physical trauma
When your body perceives that something traumatic has happened, it will grab onto every resource it can find to help it heal and recover from the assault. But in the process of doing this, it retains fluid, sometimes a lot of fluid.
Unless there’s a medical reason such as being on diuretics, it’s never wise to weigh yourself right after a major surgery. You’ll only see a reflection of the fluid level changes inside your cells.
Body trauma from things such as a fall or an auto accident will affect your weight in a similar way. To heal bruises and other soft tissue injuries, your body rushes extra fluid and nutrients to the areas that were harmed. Again, if you jump on the scale, you’ll probably see an increase in the number simply because of shifting fluid levels.
Patience Required
So there you have it. Now you can understand why the number on the scale can bounce around so much or even be off by several pounds. Learn to recognize times when your weight might be affected by one or more of these 14 factors.
When you’re dealing with any of these factors, stay patient and wait a few days. Before long, you’ll probably see a different scale number that’s much closer to your true weight.
Note: Because my book Friends with the Scale is going out of print next year, I decided to post it one chapter at a time. I’ve skipped some chapters so today is Chapter 9. You can read previous Chapters here.