In this video, Eric Roberts explains why the number on the scale may stay the sameāor even riseāwhile clothing feels looser during a fitness journey. He outlines three primary physiological reasons: (1) strength training increases muscle glycogen stores, which adds water weight; (2) intense workouts cause muscle inflammation, leading to shortāterm water retention; and (3) muscle and fat weigh the same, so gaining muscle while losing fat can mask scale changes. He also describes the āwhooshā effect, where accumulated water weight is shed after several weeks, causing a rapid drop on the scale. Throughout, he reassures viewers to stay consistent and not be discouraged by the scale.
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If your body weight isn't going down but your clothes are fitting better, here is exactly what's happening. First, when you start lifting weights, your muscles store something called glycogen. Just think of glycogen as energy for your muscles. Because you're now using your muscles more, you got to store more glycogen. This is going to make you store more weight on the scale, not because you're not losing fat or not because you're gaining fat, because your muscles need to The energy. That's number 1. Number 2, when you are working out hard, you know how you like get sore from the workouts? That soreness is an indicator there is inflammation in your muscles. When there is inflammation in your muscles, you are going to store some short-term water weight because you're holding on to that, which would make the scale not go down. That's number 2. And number 3, remember, 1 pound of fat is the same as 1 pound of muscle. If you put them both on a scale, they look different, the composition is different, but they both weigh a pound. So if you lost 2 pounds of fat but you gain a pound of muscle on top of the glycogen and the inflammation that we just talked about, your scale is not going to go down that much, but you will look physically different. And the last part to this is if you have a lot of weight to loseā 20, 30, 40, 50+ poundsā in about 3 to 6 weeks, the short-term water weight will go away and you will see what is called a whoosh effect on the scale. Your scale will go down 3, 4, 5 pounds almost overnight, and you have to just let that happen. So don't quit. You're doing fine. Keep going.
