Weight Loss Tips: Ditch Your Scale!

Hey everyone! It's Dr. Angela here.

I want to talk today about the scale - and the reason is because there's been some talk in Sugar and Flour Buster Society about this (and also I see it all the time in my office.)

People will begin doing really, really well.. like, their nutrition is absolutely spot on. They're not drinking a bunch of alcohol, and they are really focused.

But then they get on the scale and they don't see any big changes in their weight and they're wondering, "what the heck's going on?" "Why is this? Is this not working? What's happening?"

Full Transcription Below 

I want to talk to you about the scale because frankly, the scale is not your best indicator. I have mine here. I try not to use it very often. I will say it's tempting. If you've got one around it's tempting. Mine has got a lot of dust on it. Here's what's going on. And, and I talk about this all the time with my new patients.

So your weight, what shows up on the scale is just a measure of gravity and how gravity is affecting your body that day. When we look at the components of your weight, there are three different elements.

So we have an "InBody" body composition machine that we use to tell exactly what's going on. So this InBody machine is super interesting. You have your feet on the bottom of it, and then your hands are holding something out like this. And the machine is sending electrical current through you. And it can tell by how quickly the currents go through you exactly how much body fat you have, and exactly how much water weight you have. And then it takes the total weight and it subtracts the body water out and the body fat out. And what remains is called dry lean mass.

Dry lean mass is where changes in muscle are going to be, okay? Now here's the deal. Water weight is fluctuating all the time. Hormones change it, how much salt you eat, changes it, whether it's hot outside, changes in water is going in and out of you all day, every day. So even when you're breathing, you're breathing out water. That's why, if you're in a car, like, have you ever been a teenager in a car at night, and you and your boyfriend or girlfriend, or well, you know, you know what I mean? So lots of heavy breathing and the windows get all fogged up, right? So that's because you are expelling water through your breath. Your kidneys are always managing it.

So you have brilliant organs called kidneys. They're shaped like beans. They're located in your abdomen, sort of close to your back. And your kidneys are miraculous because they are managing the concentration of sodium in a very narrow range. They're managing the concentration of potassium in an even narrower range. They're managing your blood pressure. They're managing your blood sugar. They are managing a lot. And so your kidneys are making decisions about how much water weight you need to have on board at any moment in time. And so what you're going to do, if you want to be sane, when you go through this process is you're going to thank God for your kidneys. Praise them every day for the great job that they're doing, let them do their job. They're doing it under the surface, without your knowledge, let them do their work. And if they happen to decide that on a certain day, you need to have more water weight, you let them do that. Okay?

You do not want to use your weight as an indicator of how much fat you've lost. And I also always like to say, your body is always about two weeks behind what you're doing nutritionally. It's a little bit like COVID, you know, once you get exposed to COVID, it takes a couple of weeks before you know if you're sick from it or not. And so when you change the way you eat, it's going to take a couple of weeks before you start seeing results. And the reason is because what first has to happen is there is a storage of energy in your liver called glycogen. And that's going to get used up first before you ever see any fat loss. Okay? Now, as you're using glycogen, your kidneys are going to let go of water. As your insulin levels come down, your kidneys are going to let go of water.

So you might see some changes on the scale, but you might not. The point is you never really know for sure. What you can do is to trust the process. If you are watching your carbs and sugar carefully, and you're keeping your insulin levels low, and you're working at getting the protein you need, you will lose fat unless there is a whole bunch of insulin resistance. In which case you need to come and talk to me, or if you don't live in my area, talk to another obesity medicine specialist. But the best way to know is through the body composition.

I want to show you this chart.

So now you can see the body composition tests that I have here. So this is a body composition test that we did last spring on one of my patients. I just want to show you this because I want you to understand how this works. So you can see here, this is her total body water at the moment in time that this test was done, it was done about 7:30 in the morning on April 18th of 2019. And at that time, she had 67.2 pounds of water weight, which doesn't matter either way. She had 77.5 pounds of body fat, and she had 24 pounds of dry lean. So basically muscle mass. Now here she is two months later on June 18th. And you can see, she has only lost about four pounds, but what she noticed is that she was having major changes in the way her clothes fit. And she had just come into me and she said, I threw out my scale. I just am tired of paying attention to my scale.

What happened is now she has 70 pounds of body fat and 25.1 pounds of dry lean mass and 69.7 pounds of body water. So I made these calculations for you between April and June. The scale said she'd lost four pounds of weight, but she had actually lost seven and a half pounds of fat. And she had gained 1.1 pounds of muscle mass. Now that muscle is going to serve her long term because muscle is going to burn calories for her while she sleeps. So this is totally awesome, right? So make sure that you're getting these body composition tests done regularly.

Now, if you do not have access to an InBody scale or some other sort of body composition machine, here is what you can do.

InBody USA has the InBody Band 2. And this costs $149.

It's like a fitness tracker kind of thing, but it has a way of measuring your body fat percentage for you using these technical ways. And it does it right on your wrist. It's very cool. I have patients who have been using the InBody band and we are comparing it with the InBody machine results that they're getting and the body fat percentages correlate exactly. So you can use the InBody band as a way of measuring your body fat percentage and when your body fat percentage changes, you know you've lost fat or put muscle on, or maybe some of both!

So so I just want to really make sure that you understand, do not pay attention to what the scale says. The scale is so deceiving. You can't tell if you've lost fat or not, especially when you're in the weight loss phase.

Now there is some research showing that later on, once you hit a stable plateau, you can use your scale as sort of an early indicator of weight gain. But, you know, I always like to say, just ask yourself what you're eating, write down what you're eating every now and then you'll know if you're going to gain fat or not, because remember, the body is about two weeks behind what you're eating. So you start slipping up, you know when you're slipping up, when you're eating crap food!

So that is what I have for you today.

Now, if you're new to me, and this is the first time you've ever seen me, or if you're interested in getting started on your own weight loss journey, the first thing that you need to do is to get off sugar and flour products. And so I've put a link to my five day sugar detox menu HERE for you.

And so if you are interested in doing that, click that link and you will get on my email email list.  You will get all kinds of helpful hints and tips on your weight loss journey.

I'm one of the few actual physicians that's out there that's doing weights loss, that knows what they're talking about! There's a lot of science behind this that a lot of people don't understand. And so I really want you to understand all of the science behind this. So that's all I have for you today.

I hope you have an awesome day and I'll see you next time with another awesome video. And if you have any questions or comments, as you're watching this video, be sure to post them either on YouTube or or in the Facebook chat. And I will be in there and answer those questions. Okay. Take care. Bye bye.

To your health!

Dr Angela

5 day sugar detox menu