Just lose weight.
That’s it.
We could (and quite possibly should) shut the whole piece down there. That way it would deliver on its promise of being the simplest. You can’t get much simpler than three words that are sure to work.
But to belabor the point a bit and hit our word count quota, let’s press forward...
For most people (i.e. 95%, i.e. you) that have a significant chunk of blubber they’re looking to part ways with (possibly also you), you need to see the scale move lower to get where you’re trying to go.
Don’t search for a shortcut, and don’t try to find the trapdoor.
If you see the scale consistently heading higher, you’re going backwards, and whatever you’re doing isn’t working.
Could you be adding muscle? Absolutely. In fact, I’ll do you one better. If you’re doing it right, you SHOULD be adding muscle. But when you’re 30 or 40 pounds away from your target, the net result needs to lead to lower BWs.
Also, could you be holding water? Yes, and this will legitimately happen on a weigh-in, or two, or three, or five. But don’t kid yourself. Your nightly Sweet & Sour Chicken isn’t just high sodium, and you haven’t been holding water since Valentine’s Day.
Take ownership of the simple fact that the most likely reason the scale isn’t consistently going lower is that you’re just not losing body fat.
OK - that’s some tough love, I got it. But here’s some softer love to balance out your palette and add a little brightness to the dish #topchef.
This is terrific news.
Now, all your efforts can be boiled down into one number. Everything you do should be aimed at pushing the scale the lower. Your number one priority is to position yourself (smartly of course) to just become lighter over time, and your entire worth and identity as a human is now staring you back in numerical form each morning!
Eh, maybe we pushed it a bit too far there. But nevertheless, everything just got really focused and super simple.
While we actually don’t want to put too much stock into the scale number every morning (it’s ironic and oxymoronic and possibly another onic I’m forgetting), you do want to push the scale lower on any given day. But many days it won’t go lower and it shouldn’t go lower and that’s okay.
Each single, daily observation is nothing more than a singular data point. The truth is in the trend, as they say.
Over a period of days, weeks, and months, the trendline in your BW needs to be moving downward. It needs to have a negative slope. Not necessarily completely linear in nature, concave is probably a more likely outcome for all my Kahn Academy transplants, but downward sloping nonetheless.
So don’t donate your digital scale to Goodwill just yet. It still deserves a solid spot, flat, on your bathroom floor, so you can use it as a tool to radically altering your physique.
I’d just go ahead and skip those post Asian Buffet weigh-ins. They’re never pretty.
For those of you super serious about getting all sleek and sexy and stuff, be sure to give Full Throttle Fat Loss a look.