Concept

Scale Noise

How Body Composition Tracking Keeps You Motivated | Total Health and Fitness / The scale is a measurement. It is a lousy motivator.

"The bathroom scale is not useless. It is simply the wrong tool to hang your motivation on, because it moves for reasons that have nothing to do with progress: water shifts, salt, sleep, stress, the time of day, where you are in a training week. We covered the mechanics in why the scale does not tell the whole story.\n\nThe motivational problem is different from the measurement problem. A noisy number checked daily trains you to feel judged daily. One morning the scale is down and you feel unstoppable; the next it is up and the whole plan feels broken. Neither feeling reflects reality, but both drive behavior. People make their worst program decisions, skipping sessions, slashing calories, abandoning plans, in reaction to scale noise."

Related Ideas

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  • Boring ExplanationsHow Body Composition Tracking Keeps You Motivated | Total Health and Fitness · When the numbers go the wrong way
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  • Trend ReviewHow Body Composition Tracking Keeps You Motivated | Total Health and Fitness · How a tracking rhythm builds accountability
Scale Noise | How Body Composition Tracking Keeps You Motivated | Total Health and Fitness | Bifalgorithm | Bifalgorithm