Aha! Take Body Fat Measurements With a Grain of Salt

False alarm. Maybe.

My fancy new body fat scale and I are still getting acquainted, apparently. Yesterday evening the scale told me I had a body fat percentage of 34%. That seemed a bit high. This morning it's saying 28%.

After some research I arrived at this conclusion: When using a body fat scale, use it at a standard time of the day, like in the morning.

As it turns out, body fat scales measure your body density, which can change throughout the day depending on if you have food in your tummy, the amount of water you have in your body at the time...poo. Anything in your body.

So, just like a regular scale, what you're really measuring is a trend rather than exact weight. That cheers me up a little bit. 34% seemed like an awfully high body fat percentage. 28% isn't great, but it's better. So I'm somewhere between 28% and 34%, give or take.

The point is, I still need to lose weight.

Here's a page which has some great information about body fat scales and 10 tips for standardizing your body fat measurements.

Got a New Scale: Some Good News, Some Bad News

BLARG!

I've finally done it. I invested in an actual scale, instead of the spring operated one my tiny wife thinks is sufficient. I was tired of the scale telling me radically different weights several different times in the same 5 minutes.

"You're 230 pounds! You're 235 pounds! You're 232 pounds! You're 240 POUNDS?!?!? GAH!! JUST TELL ME what you want me to SAY so you'll STOP STANDING ON ME!!!!"

My new scale is steadfast in its opinion. I am now 227 pounds!

Yay! That's consistent with what the fancypants scale at the gym tells me.

I've lost about 23 pounds so far. And that makes me crazy happy. Not sure if I'll make my 10 pound goal this month. I ended December at 233. I'm down 5 pounds. For sure I could wring a couple more pounds out of myself in the next 8 days.

But my scale had some unfortunate news for me as well. I got one of them there newfangled (in my house, anyway) bodyfat scales and it tells me I'm at 34% body fat. OUCH.

To get down to an average healthy body fat I'll need to lose another 25 pounds to get down to 202 pounds...which I guess is sort of my general goal weight for this year anyway. So what am I crying about?

Way back in 2003 when I weighed 220 pounds I was about 24% body fat, so apparently I've lost some muscle between then and now.

I need to hit the gym. Or get out and move around more. Or go back in time and be 10 years younger.

Shoot the Messenger, Get a Better Scale

Okay, now that I've cooked myself up a high spice breakfast and I'm sitting down I'm going to vent some of my frustrations...namely that:

1. My scale is a piece of crap and
2. My weight loss has slowed

Now, I know what you're going to say about this scale thing. You're going to say what my wife says: that I'm just upset at the scale because it's not showing me what I want to see. And, okay, yes. But our scale is more of a ballpark figure scale. For example, my scale will tell me I'm 135 before a shower and might tell me I'm 149 after.

I don't think i use 14 pounds of soap. Or maybe I'm a lot more absorbent than I realize. I should try drinking water like Mork some time to see if...what? I said Mork.

MORK!

That's right, I made a Mork and Mindy reference RIGHT here in 2011. Deal with it (for the kiddies, I've included a reference at the bottom)

Anyway, the moral of the story is, get a good scale if you plan to be obsessing about weight loss for any length of time.

In other news, I think I need to start setting shorter term goals. Sure, my goal is to lose 50 pounds over the next year. And maybe that's a bit too distant to really keep up the enthusiasm.

Maybe I should start set the goal of losing 4 pounds by the end of December. That's a 14,000 calorie deficit over the next 24 days. Totally doable.