A scale can be invaluable tool for helping you manage your bodyweight, but only if it used properly, and not so much if it used alone. Your scale needs a partner, and it has been my experience that the most helpful partner you can give it is a daily food consumption diary. Such a diary should keep a record of everything you consume with a caloric content – food or drink. These two tools used in concert, and in the right way, make a powerful team.
Using your scale and keeping a diary have two main benefits. First, they give you objective feedback on what and how you are doing as far as bodyweight management. Second, they are a reminder that you have to “face the music” (reality) on a regular basis. I, and many of the lifters I’ve coached have found that when you know you have to “face the scale” every day, you tend to think twice about what you eating, because you know the scale will tell all the next day.
Together, the scale and diary can help you achieve pretty much anything you want when it comes to maintaining or changing your bodyweight. Here is how they work together.
Leveraging The Power of a Scale By Using It as A Compass, Not a Critic
When it comes to the scale (assuming you use the same one and it is reliable) you should weigh yourself at the same time every day, with the same attire (e.g., your underwear). Weighing in daily not only tells you exactly how you are doing, but after a time, it may very well get you to change what you are eating, if that is appropriate.
For instance, if you know you have eaten normally on a given day but have a chance to eat a big dessert or bag of chips, you will often be dissuaded from that notion, if you know you have to face the scale the next day.
But more importantly, the scale is you guide to how you are doing and therefore can provide you with tremendous motivational energy. Even a small loss, or a slower gain, to immediately tell you if you are going in the right direction, preventing you from veering off course.
Don’t hate you scale, see it is a friend that is helping you stay on course.
Your Second Powerful Tool – Your Diary
While your scale tells you what direction you are going in, your diary tells you why. For it to work you need to use it every day to record at least two things – your bodyweight and every single thing you ate that day (including any fluids with calories), along with the approximate quantities of each (a bag of chips or a can of soda – hopefully something more nutritious – as long as they are the same basic kind and amount each day).
Initially, the diary will simply tell you exactly what you ate each day. It is important to keep a record for at least a full week to really learn anything, as most people have a somewhat weekly cyclical element to their eating (perhaps eating similar meals each workday and then doing something different on the weekends).
If you know your cycle to be longer (e.g., you live in your house every other week but are on the road the following week), review your diet using that time frame. Be sure to include everything you consume that has calories (yes that 330 latte from Super Coffee counts, although a black coffee with no sugar doesn’t).
Pick the same time every day to record your intake, unless you continually capture information on your phone or some other device as the day goes by. The main thing is using a consistent routine to do the capturing. Once you capture a full week, or other interval you’ve decided is best, it is time to determine whether you need to go any further.
If you are happy with your current bodyweight and body composition and you are getting enough protein (somewhere between .67 and 1 gram per pound of your bodyweight is a pretty good guideline for a weightlifter who wants bodyweight maintenance) you can just keep doing what you are doing (although you may want to improve your diet in terms of consuming more fruits and vegetables and fewer cupcakes). But you should continue to record your bodyweight each day, and note any changes in diet from the base week you recorded.
However, if your goal is to alter your bodyweight, you need to take a careful look at how you’ve been eating. Look at the what foods are in your diet and the approximate calories in each item (this information is invariably available if you look for it on the actual product label, the website of the vendor who makes or sells the food you are consuming, or via an internet search). Once you’ve gathered that information, you are ready to see how you can alter your diet for the better.
Winning Strategies For Losing Weight
If you want to lose weight there are two basic strategies, trade off or portion control. If you can trade off the 330 calorie Super Coffee latte for black coffee without suffering too much, and you’ve been having the Super Coffee a few times a week, just a change like that can make a significant difference over time.
I had a good friend who gained almost 20 lbs. in a year, with no real change to his “diet” (he ate pretty much the same the prior year as the year which he gained so much weight). Once he kept his diary for the first week, we identified the culprit pretty easily. It turned out that a soda machine that had been installed in my friend’s workplace a year ago. Once it was there, he started to purchase sodas when he passed by the machine. He found those sodas so enjoyable, that he found ways to pass by the machine more frequently. We realized that simply eliminating (or at least reducing) his soda intake would have a significant effect on his bodyweight.
He reduced his soda intake and liked the results so much that he eventually substituted ice cold water, without any undue suffering. He lost all the weight he had gained, and saved some money too!
Another friend of mine simply substituted frozen yogurt for a high fat ice cream he’d gotten in the habit of consuming most days for desert. He found that he enjoyed a good frozen yogurt almost as much as he had liked ice cream, and he surely loved the results he saw when he made this simple substitution. Problem solved.
The other weight control option is to consume the same things as always, but use portion sizing to control the calories in what you eat. This way you are not “giving up” anything you like, just consuming smaller quantities of it. Some find using smaller plates, so that what you are consuming appears bigger, can help when you make such a change. Eating more slowly and chewing each bite more fully can help as well, since it let’s you savor what you are eating more, and it slows you up. We know that there is a lag between eating and feeling full (e.g., if you eat a given portion of a food you may not feel satisfied until 20-30 minutes later).
Former Mr. Universe, Bruce Randall, use portion control exclusively to increase his bodyweight from about 225 lb. to about 400 lb. He wanted to see how big and strong he could become and he did get much bigger and stronger with that bodyweight gain.
He was in the military when he started his quest to increase his bodyweight dramatically, so he could eat as much as he wanted without it costing him anything. His approach to gaining weight was reportedly simply along the lines of eating one more spoonful of food each day. And he got to the point where his portions were so large he no longer used plates for his food, but rather filled up his tray as if it was a large plate when he went to the base cafeteria.
However, by the time he was discharged from the service (resulting in great savings to our Armed Forces) he realized that continuing to increase his bodyweight could become an unaffordable proposition. He did gain weight for a while, but then resolved to bring it back down. So he essentially reversed his habit, gradually decreasing his food consumption by a little bit each day. He ultimately succeeded in cutting his weight by more than 50%.
Eventually, he set his sights on winning the Mr. Universe title, and estimated he had to rebuild his weight by about 40 lb. of muscle to accomplish that. He did this through some serious eating and training. He made his goal, and did win the Mr. Universe title at a bodyweight of a little more than 220 lb., so this approach clearly works.
You can try either or both approaches (food substitution and portion control) to increase or decrease your bodyweight. And you may be surprised at the results, finding it is not as tough as you might have feared (although you do have to stick with either method over time to realize significant results).
Be Careful When You Are Working To Gain Weight
I used a similar approach to increase my bodyweight from about 148 lb. to about 190 lb. across my weightlifting career, always getting significant increases in strength as I gradually gained weight. But I saw many others gain weight much faster without realizing the improvement that I enjoyed. My goal was typically to gain one half pound to one pound per month, up or down.
So monitor your bodyweight on a regular schedule, diary your food intake to establish a baseline. If necessary, modify portions and/or the content of your food to modify your bodyweight. Even better, improve the quality of your diet as well.
Persistence Wins In The End
If you are persistent you will succeed. You’ll find that, after a while, seeing progress in your diary will likely become so rewarding that your desire to continue to improve will outweigh any desire to go back to your old ways.