The Truth About Scale Fluctuations

Few things can affect your mood quite as quickly as stepping on the scales and seeing a number you weren't expecting.

You feel like you've had a good week. You've been making healthier choices, moving more, drinking your water and generally feeling pretty pleased with yourself. Then you step on the scales and...

It's gone up.

Excuse me?! 😂

It's incredibly easy to look at that number and immediately decide you've done something wrong. But one of the most useful things I've learned over the years is that body weight simply doesn't move in a nice, neat downward line.

Some days it'll be down. Some days it'll be up. Sometimes it'll barely move at all.

And that's completely normal.

Your body weight isn't just body fat

When we see the number on the scales increase, it's tempting to translate that immediately as I've gained fat.

But the number you're looking at represents much more than that.

Your weight can change because of the amount of food and fluid currently in your body, water retention, salt and carbohydrate intake, hormonal changes, stress, sleep, digestion, exercise and recovery.

Even simply weighing yourself at a different time of day can give you a different number.

So if you're a pound or two heavier than you were yesterday, that doesn't automatically mean you've suddenly gained that amount of body fat.

Sometimes your body is simply... being a body.

And bodies are annoyingly complicated things 😂

Why does my weight suddenly jump after a meal out?

This is one I've experienced plenty of times.

You go out for dinner, enjoy yourself, perhaps have a couple of drinks, and the next morning the scales have apparently decided to punish you for having a social life.

But restaurant meals and takeaways are often higher in salt and carbohydrates than the meals we'd normally eat at home. Both can affect how much water your body temporarily holds.

Add alcohol, a later night, different sleep and simply having more food still being digested, and it's hardly surprising that the scales might look different the following morning.

That doesn't mean the meal had no calories or that our choices don't matter. It just means the immediate change you see on the scales isn't necessarily telling you the story you think it is.

Give your body time to settle before deciding everything has gone horribly wrong.

This is actually why I like weighing regularly

I know weighing yourself isn't right for everybody. Some people find the scales unhelpful, prefer to weigh less frequently or choose not to use them at all. That's absolutely fine.

Personally, I weigh myself daily.

Strangely, seeing all those fluctuations has actually made individual numbers less important to me, not more.

If I only weighed once and happened to catch myself on a particularly high day, I might assume I'd gained weight. When I've got more data, I can see that my weight naturally bounces around.

I'm much more interested in the trend over time than what happened between yesterday morning and this morning.

It's a bit like looking out of the window on one cold day and deciding summer is over. One day doesn't tell you very much about the whole season.

The scales are only one piece of information

Even when weight loss is something you're working towards, the scales don't need to be the only way you judge whether things are going well. Look at the bigger picture.

How have your habits been over the last few weeks? How are your clothes fitting? Are you moving more easily? Are you getting stronger? How are your energy levels? Are some of the healthier choices you've been working on starting to feel more normal?

Those things matter too.

And sometimes they're changing even when the scales seem determined not to cooperate.

Don't let one number change your whole day

I think this is probably the biggest lesson.

If you're going to use the scales, try to treat the number as information rather than a judgement.

It doesn't tell you whether you've been “good” or “bad”. It doesn't erase yesterday's walk. It doesn't cancel the healthier meals you've eaten. And it certainly doesn't tell you anything about your worth as a person.

It's simply one piece of data.

That's something I've had to learn myself because it's very easy to attach far too much meaning to a number.

The #HealthyVibes approach

For me, #HealthyVibes has increasingly become about looking at health as a much bigger picture.

Yes, weight can be part of that picture. I'm not going to pretend I never care what the scales say, because I do.

But I'm also interested in what I'm eating, whether I'm moving my body, how I'm sleeping, my energy, my strength and whether the things I'm doing are actually realistic enough to become part of my normal life.

That's why I'd rather look at patterns than panic over individual numbers.

If the overall trend isn't moving in the direction I want over time, then that's useful information and I can look at what I might change. But one random Tuesday morning when I'm inexplicably 1.5lb heavier?

I'm not handing it that much power anymore.

A final thought 💭

Your weight will fluctuate. That's part of having a human body.

If you choose to use the scales, zoom out far enough to see the trend rather than allowing one day's number to dictate how you feel about your progress.

The scale is data. It's one tool, not the whole toolbox.

And sometimes the most useful thing you can do after an unexpected weigh-in is carry on with your day.