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Kelly Barbera • December 5, 2023

Throw away your bathroom scale!

Your bathroom scale is only going to frustrate you.

Your bathroom scale tells you one thing! A NUMBER! It does not tell you how much fat you have, how much water you have , how much muscle and so on. The bathroom scale is extremely deceiving and can sabotage your health and fitness goals. We use a gold standard medical device made by SECA. It is a bio impedence scale that will give us so much important data.

We will find out the following:

BMI

Body Fat %

Hydration

Visceral Adipose Tissue ( fat around the waste)

Phase Angle

Muscle Mass

and more.


When you begin working out especially strength training, you'll retain water. This is why so many women get discouraged when they first start lifting weights. They think OH NO! I have gained weight. Then they go back to endless cardio, getting more and more skinny fat. It's best to do a body composition scan every 4 to 6 weeks. Start with a base line and track progress. You must trust the process. Your weight will fluctuate daily for several reasons.


When you scan every 4 weeks you get to see improvement in all areas, fat loss, muscle gain or loss or maintenance, water retention, and so on. If you scan does not show positive results then its time to look at your training program and your nutrition. They all work together.


So many people will give up too soon. A perfect example. You start eating well, strength training and all the things for 8 weeks straight. You step on your scan and nothing has changed. SO YOU GIVE UP! What's the point. Well here is what is most likely happening. You may have lost 3 pounds of fat and gained a couple pounds of muscle and are holding a pound of water because you had a heavy lifting day yesterday. That great progress but the bathroom scale does not show it. The scan will. What we want to look at is how much body fat % did you lose. Did you gain or maintain muscle. That is the overall goal.  We want to lose pure fat, not water or muscle.


I encourage you to get rid of your bathroom scale and begin doing monthly or quarterly body composition scans so you really have a deeper look of what is going on inside. At Temple Fitness we offer body composition scan for members and non members. This is a key element in our blue print for all of our clients to progress towards their goals! Go ahead and make it a priority for you and stop letting the scale frustrate you!


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