A Bad Scale Day
By Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, and Nina Frusztajer Marquis, MD
Authors of The Serotonin Power Diet

A few days ago I was waiting in line to return something when I noticed a sign tacked up on the wall. It was an official notice from a department in my state government telling customers to report attempts to mislead them about the true weight or measurement of something they might buy. The sign detailed ways in which scales and other weighing devices could be rigged so the customer is mislead. As I was in a department store, not a grocery store, it was hard to see the relevance of this sign.

Would people complain to the state about trying to fit into a pair of pants, which should have been the right size but were impossible to pull on? Would they feel duped if they tried on a dress, which would have been a size 12 a decade ago and now is labeled a size 10, and the dress fit? Do we really care how much things weigh outside the supermarket? But as I was musing about this (the line was very long), it occurred to me that we very much care about how much things weigh when we are the ones being weighed.

Recently I read a magazine article profiling the struggles of 3 women to meet their weight-loss goal. They were mid-way through a 4 month diet program and according to the article were discouraged because when they weighed themselves, their weight did not go down. Indeed one woman had gained a few pounds. It turned out that their scales had deceived them. The scales were not rigged to make them weigh more than they actually did. But their weight on the scales did not reflect the fact that they had indeed lost weight.

This was not apparent at first reading. The nutritionist giving them advice stated in the article that the women were eating more or not exercising or both. And she told them to cut back on their calories, cut out certain foods and to exercise more.
But in reading the women’s stories, it was apparent that they probably had lost weight; the scales simply did not show it. One woman had been working out five days a week with a trainer to increase her muscle mass and in the picture accompanying her story, one could see larger muscles in her arms and legs compared to her pre-diet picture. It was possible that she added two or more pounds of new muscle, which was equal to the 2 or 3 pounds of fat she might have lost. So when she stood on the scale, the needle did not move.

The second woman had gained 4 pounds. She said she had added starchy carbohydrates back into her diet after following a high protein, low-carbohydrate diet. She and the nutritionist thought that her weight gain was due to her increased calorie intake. It wasn’t. She had not increased her calories at all as she was eating much less protein. Her weight gain was simply water. It has been known for perhaps a century that when you eliminate starchy carbohydrates from your diet, your body loses water. When you add carbohydrates back, your body gains water. When she eliminated the carbohydrates from her diet weeks earlier, she lost about 5 pounds of water. And when she added them back, 5 pounds of water came back with them. Here was another instance of the scale misleading the dieter into thinking she was failing in her diet. The scale was just weighing the water that returned to her body.

The third woman was premenstrual. She knew she retained water and also became constipated when she was about to get her period. These two factors would surely mask the two or three pounds she probably did lose. But because she felt so bloated and her clothes felt tight, she was sure the scale was right when it did not report any weight loss.

These women were fortunate; the magazine staff supported their weight-loss efforts. And even if they were discouraged enough by the scale to want to give up the diet, they couldn’t. They had committed themselves to seeing it through to the end.

But the dieter standing alone on the bathroom scale does not have a magazine staff to offer advice and encouragement. When the scale does not move downward, the dieter assumes that the diet is not working and gives up. When and if you are disappointed by the failure of your scale to show weight loss, do not give up your diet or report the matter to your local state department of weights and measures. Find another way of determining whether you have lost weight. Try on the clothes that were too small prior to starting the diet to see if they are any looser. Measure your problem areas to see if they are shrinking. If you go to a gym, ask the staff to do a body fat measurement on you. And look at yourself in the mirror. Do you look any thinner?

If you believe water retention is affecting the scale, review your food and liquid intake to see whether you may have been consuming more salt or liquids than usual. Being premenstrual or menopausal can increase water retention. Eating fiber, which brings water into the intestinal tract, can do the same. If you are retaining water, you may be able to sweat it off with a vigorous workout. In any case, wait until visible signs of water retention are gone before weighing yourself.

Don’t give up because you had a bad scale day. Your body doesn’t care what the scale says. It will get rid of excess weight as long as you stay on the diet and exercise.

Copyright © 2007 Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, and Nina Frusztajer Marquis, MD

Authors
Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, has been recognized worldwide for decades of pioneering research into the relationship of food, mood, brain, and appetite. Dr. Wurtman received her PhD in cell biology from MIT and took additional training as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in nutrition/obesity. The author of five books for the general public, she has written more than 40 peer-reviewed articles for professional publications. She splits her time between Boston and Miami.

Nina Frusztajer Marquis, MD, received her master's degree in nutrition from Columbia University and her medical degree from George Washington University. Her articles on weight, stress, and lifestyle have appeared in numerous publications. With Judith Wurtman, she founded the Adara Weight Loss Centers in the Boston, Miami and San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives.

They are the authors of The Serotonin Power Diet: Use Your Brain’s Natural Chemistry to Cut Cravings, Curb Emotional Overeating, and Lose Weight. Published by Rodale. January 2007; $24.95US/$31.00CAN; 1-59486-346-6.

For more information, please visit www.serotoninpowerdiet.com