Why The Scales Are A Terrible Tool For Measuring Fat Gained Over Christmas
One of my favourite films is The Great Escape. The film, based on a true story, depicts the attempted escape of 250 allied soldiers from one of the most secure Prisoner of War camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The soldiers spent a year secretly constructing a 330-foot tunnel using cutlery they had stolen from the camp kitchens. They used the cutlery to fashion tools from the knives spoons and forks.
No wonder it took 600 people over a year to dig that tunnel!
Whilst there’s no doubting the ingenuity of using silverware for digging equipment, we can agree that cutlery is a terrible tool for digging.
The POWs had to make do with cutlery, but we too often pick poor tools for the job. For example, millions of people use bathroom scales to measure fat loss. In fact, the scales can be a terrible tool for measuring short term changes in weight.
How much weight did you put on over Christmas?
Ok, I’ll, go first. I put on 5lbs. 5lbs in three days. Am I bothered? Not really, because I know that only a tiny amount of that 5lbs is actually fat.
So, what is the rest?
When you step on the scales, they measure what you weigh. “Thanks, genius we already knew that”. But bodyweight is not the same thing as body fat. Have you heard that 60% of the human body is made up of water? That means, 60% of the number you see on the scale is water. The rest is the weight of your bones, organs, muscles and tendons as well as food in your gut, faecal matter and of course body fat.
As you can’t change how much your organs, bones and tendons weigh. We’ll look at three elements that affect short term weight fluctuations:
· Food
· Glycogen and water
· Body Fat
We’ve been stuffing ourselves over the festive period
Mince pies, chocolates, turkey, vegetables, roast potatoes, dessert etc. Is it a surprise that the scales are going to go up after we’ve eaten so much? The sheer amount of food we have in our gut is going to mean we weight more.
We can safely assume at least 1.5lbs of the extra weight is the result of having more food in your stomach, especially after 3 days of festive meals.
Food doesn’t automatically get stored as fat
The body stores extra calories in many ways. One way is to store excess carbohydrates as glycogen in muscle and liver tissue. How much glycogen you store varies between different people, but about 1lb is the norm, especially if we’ve eaten a lot of carbohydrates.
For every 1lb of stored glycogen, the body will also store 2lbs of water. So, if we’re storing 1lb of Glycogen, we also store 2lbs of water.
From our initial 5lb weight gain over Christmas we have:
· Food — 1.5lbs
· Glycogen — 1lbs
· Water — 2lbs
Total — 4.5lbs
That leaves 0.5lb of fat gain
The thing we all dread — eating too much and putting on body fat. But before we beat ourselves up for having that extra mince pie, let’s look at why we might not need to worry too much.
To gain 1lb of fat you would need to eat 3500 calories over your normal calorie allowance. So, if you need 2000 calories to maintain your weight, you will need to eat 5500 calories to put on 1lb of fat. To put on 5lbs of fat, you would need to eat 27,500 calories! I can guarantee you haven’t eaten that much.
No, seriously, you haven’t.
According to one study, the average person eats around 5000 calories on Christmas day. That’s about 1lb of fat gained (it’s actually much less — the human is weird like that). Remember, how stuffed you felt on Christmas day — alcohol, mince pies, appetisers, turkey, vegetables, roast potatoes, chocolates, dessert and a cheeseboard. Try doing that for 5 days straight. That’s 5lbs of fat gain.
Don’t beat yourself up if you’ve gained some weight over Christmas
First of all, it’s Christmas. Enjoying good food and spending time with loved ones is so important. That 0.5lb of fat you might have gained, no big deal. Go back to eating and exercising normally and you’ll get rid of that half-pound in less than a week. You could be at your pre-Christmas weight in just a few days.
Cutlery is great for eating with, but not so much for digging
Similarly, bathroom scales are terrible when it comes to measuring short term weight changes, especially over the festive period. Bodyweight isn’t the same thing as body fat. Weight is made up of organs, muscle, food in the gut, glycogen and water.
Just because the number on the scales has gone up, it doesn’t mean it’s all fat. Most of it is just an increase in food volume, glycogen and water. There will be a tiny amount of fat gain, but it’s going to be minimal.
Don’t beat yourself up.
Go back to your normal eating and exercise routine. You’ll be back to where you were in no time. Also, if you haven’t watched The Great Escape, I suggest you search for it on Netflix and have a watch. If you’ve already seen it, watch it again!
