Why The Scale Isn’t Going Down I Not Losing Weight But Losing Inches

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. Hope you're doing well. In this video, we are going to be covering something that every single time I make a post about it on one of my social medias— you can follow me on either one of those social medias here if you do not already— but every time I make a video about this particular topic on my social medias, every time the comment section is filled with Eric, I needed to hear this. Eric, this is happening to me. Eric, thank you so much for letting me know this and educating me on this. And so I figured if a 1-minute Instagram video can help, why not make a much more in-depth video on the topic of if your clothes are fitting differently, if your shirts are fitting differently, if your pants, if your dresses, if you are measuring yourself and your inches are going down, but that scale isn't going down. Why is this happening? What can you do to fix it? How long is it going to take for the scale to go down? We will cover— you and I, best buds— we will cover everything in this video right here. All right, so first we're going to talk about what the is going on. Well, here's what's going on, my friend. If you are somebody that is seeing your clothes fit differently And quite possibly even seeing your body change, like whether you're looking in the mirror and you see your stomach is closer, or again, you can clearly tell you couldn't fit into a pair of jeans a month ago and now you're fitting into those pair of jeans. Or, you know, instead of going to your 3rd belt notch, you're going to your 4th belt notch, or whatever the case may be. If that's happening to you but that scale just isn't moving down, what is happening is something called Body recomposition. Body recomposition. In short, body recomp. I'll probably refer to it as body recomp in this video. You're having something called body recomp. Body recomp is just when you are losing fat and building muscle at the same time. Which, by the way, like, let me make this very clear. It's one of the hardest things to do. I wish, I wish any Any person who's been working out for a very, very long period of time, I wish I could have a very successful body recomposition where maybe my weight didn't change that much, but I was losing fat and building muscle at the same time. That would be phenomenal. And I just want you to know if it's happening to you, it's a very good thing. Because let me break it down even more in depth. Let's say, I don't know, in a month's time you lost 3 pounds— let's say you lost 4 pounds of fat, but let's say you gained 3 pounds of muscle, which we'll talk about that here a little bit more in a second. But let's just say for right now you gained 3 pounds of muscle, you lost 4 pounds of fat. The scale in a month's time, the scale would only change a pound. Why? Because you're losing 4 pounds of fat, but you're gaining 3 pounds of muscle. Remember, muscle doesn't weigh more than fat. There's this like misconception that muscle weighs more than fat. Muscle does not weigh more than fat. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. The composition of those two things are different, just like a pound of bricks weighs the same as a pound of feathers. There's a lot more fucking feathers, right? A pound of muscle and a pound of fat Pound of whack. A pound of fat weigh the same, but muscle is more dense than fat, so that means it takes up less space on your body. This is why, again, in a month's time, if the scale only went down one little itty-bitty teeny tiny pound, but you look different, your clothes fit different, you're seeing change in your body, This is why, because muscle takes up less space, it's more dense, and muscle weighs the same as fat. So if you're essentially, you're not replacing, I hear this too, you're not replacing fat for muscle. That's not what's going on. You don't replace the two. You burn fat and you build muscle. It's just, it's two separate functions. But if you do that, the scale isn't gonna change that much, but you, my friend, are gonna see massive differences in your physique. So that is the short and sweet of why it's happening. I also wanna talk about quick It especially happens when you are more of a beginner to following a real strength training program. And so this is for a few reasons. Number one, it's just easier to build muscle when you are a beginner to, again, following a real strength training program. And I got to make that distinction because there's a difference between following a real strength training program and doing something like an Orange Theory or a P90X Or random YouTube videos or anything of that nature. Nothing against those things. It's definitely better than doing nothing at all. Right. But there's just a difference between following a real strength training program and doing workouts like that. When you follow a real strength training program, you are going to build muscle much more effectively and efficiently. So if you are a beginner, you will be building that muscle relatively quicker than somebody who is not a beginner. And so if you are more towards the beginner of, again, following a real program, You are somebody who's going to be able to, if you're in a calorie deficit, which as we know is the only way to lose body fat, if you're in a calorie deficit and you just started lifting weights, doing those things, you are somebody who's going to be gaining muscle a bit faster. And so again, if you're losing 4 pounds of fat and gaining 3 pounds of muscle, the scale might not change that much and all of those good things, you know, good things that might be going on. And it is a good thing because I want you to, you know, we'll talk about this here a little bit later in the video, but Body recomposition is a very good thing. It lets you know you're on the right track because remember, how else— I want you to like— I'm almost backpedaling here a bit, but I want you to think about this. How else would your body change? How else would your clothes fit differently? How else would you look different in the mirror? How else would you be able to fit into jeans or wear clothes you haven't worn since last summer? How else would you be able to do that if you're not losing body fat? There's no way. If you weren't, if you were just building muscle, you wouldn't have the massive physique changes because there's no way to lose— you're not losing body fat. If you just built muscle, that'd be great, but your physique really wouldn't change all that much. It's because you're losing fat and building muscle. And people get very almost discouraged, which again, we'll talk about here a bit later, but You almost get discouraged because the scale isn't going down. But remember, if your body's changing, you have to be losing body fat, which is why I just mentioned if you're doing this body recomp thing, you are on the right track, man. And one quick note here, because I know some people might ask me about this. Sometimes I get the question of, okay, Eric, body recomp, is it really possible to, to gain 4 pounds of muscle in a month or 2 months or whatever the case may be? Yes and no. So stick with me here. No, Slow as in you might not gain a ton of actual lean muscle mass. If you're a beginner, you will be gaining lean muscle mass much more quickly, but even still, what's going to happen is, and this happens to, again, a lot of people, especially when you start getting into following a strength training program, what's going to happen is you are going to, again, you're going to be losing body fat because you're in a calorie deficit, but what's also going to happen is, and I talk about this a little bit more in depth on a Separate video. I'll kind of like link it here above. But when you start lifting weights, 2 things happen to you. Number one, you're going to store something called more glycogen inside of your muscles. For the sake of this video and for simple terms, just think glycogen is like energy for your muscles. And so when you start lifting weights, your brain says, oh shit, these muscles are working a bit more. We have to make sure we store more glycogen, store more energy so that when you go and do your workouts, your muscles have the capacity and the ability to have more energy to perform during your workouts. And so storing this glycogen inside of your muscles is a good thing. The thing about glycogen is it is going to retain some extra water weight, right? So it's almost like you're, you're gaining muscle, but it's somewhat because you're gaining actual lean muscle tissue. The other part of it is you're storing extra water, extra glycogen inside of your muscles. And again, think about it. If you go from not really lifting weights at all and not having to do these, you know, contractions of your muscles, because when you lift weights, you contract your muscles, they use energy, right? If you go from not using, you know, much energy in your muscles to then using a lot of energy in your muscles, your body's going to say, here you go, we got to make sure we give you some glycogen. Which is why I say gaining lean muscle, you're not going to gain 4 pounds of lean muscle in a month. I mean, Maybe at the very beginner stage you could, or if you're on steroids, but a combination of lean muscle mass plus also muscle glycogen, which is almost in a sense gaining lean muscle mass, then yes, you are going— this is why the scale might not move that much, but you will continue to see change in your body. And the second thing is when you start lifting weights, what's going to happen is there's going to be inflammation inside of your muscles. And because when you work out, it's going to sound weird, But when you work out, you literally tear your muscle fibers apart. When you tear, you create micro tears inside of your muscles. Your brain says, shit, this is damaged. Like, because you're working out, you're damaging your muscle tissue. It's damaged. We have to send inflammation to that particular area to make sure we can repair it, recover, and grow stronger, more defined muscles. And so what will happen is when there's inflammation, there's going to be some extra water weight. And that's just normal, right? So for all of these reasons combined, this is especially why when people again first start lifting weights, they tend to hold onto some weight for a little bit. And this is a perfect example because I'm going to show you one of my clients, Tori. I'm going to show you her body weight and her measurements. You can see the first like 4-ish weeks, she's not really making much change in her actual scale weight, but you saw her measurements were going down. And so after about that 4-week mark, look at what's starting to happen. She's trending down in her body weight. It's almost like her body is kind of like almost getting rid of, you know, the extra water weight, the extra inflammation. Your body's getting more used to it. That's what happens. Your body gets used to, all right, we're working out now. All right, cool. I know how much water, you know, how much, how much water to have for inflammation. I know how much glycogen to put towards your muscles and so on and so forth, right? This is why it's so super important to not quit during those first 4 to 6 weeks because normally I've seen this plenty of times with clients. Normally the first 4 to 6 weeks goes by. You don't lose that much weight and then you kind of drop 3, 4, 5, 6 pounds and you'll keep dropping weight after that. But if you quit in the first 4 weeks, you're never going to actually drop the weight and you're never going to actually get to your goal. So just understand that the first couple of weeks the scale might not move that much. That's completely normal. You're not doing anything wrong. You're probably actually doing everything right and just make sure you keep going because if you're doing the right things and you're eating in a calorie deficit and you're strength training You know you will see progress eventually. And this is— this situation is totally normal. And so piggybacking right on top of that, how long should it take for the scale to go down? Well, it depends. As always, I kind of already mentioned a little bit of it over here, but there's 2 main scenarios I like to break this up into. If you're somebody who has 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 pounds to lose for health reasons, right? Being 70, 80, 60 pounds overweight. It's not going to be the best for your overall health, right? So if you're somebody who has, you know, a substantial amount of weight to lose, I would say roughly after the first 4 to 6 weeks, kind of like I showed you with my client Tori, after the first 4 to 6 weeks, you should probably see that scale weight start to trend down if you're in an overall calorie deficit. And if you're just being very consistent with that overall calorie deficit, um, I do want to say this. Most people don't actually ever let that happen. Like I said, most people don't ever get to the first 4 to 6 weeks. They get to the first 4 days, 4 hours, for fuck's sake. Like, most people are just way too incredibly impatient. And you know what? I might be calling you out right now because you might be one of those people. If you don't lose weight in a, in a 4-day span or a 7-day span or a 10-day span, you're over here freaking the fuck out. Like, again, I just showed you my client Tori. She didn't quote unquote lose weight for 4 weeks, but After 4 weeks, she's now down, I think it's 5 or 6 pounds. So that means roughly over a 4 to 5 week span, she's down 4 to 5 pounds, which is a pound per week on average, which is tremendous progress. And so you can't be so goddamn impatient. Now, if you get past the 4 to 6 week mark and you have a substantial amount of weight to lose, yes, you do want to see that scale weight start to trend down. I would kind of concern you and just tell you that you should be still tracking your measurements and your progress pictures, which we'll touch on here in a second. Um, but if If you're somebody who has not seen the scale go down, essentially what you'll do is just simply make an adjustment, normally either to your calories or to your steps. And I wanna show you here another example of one of my clients, Michelle. Michelle is somebody who is absolutely ruthlessly consistent. She does not have a problem being impatient. Ruthlessly consistent, you can see she's lost a tremendous amount of weight. So, we had stuck to a particular calorie number for Roughly the better part of 30 pounds down. We didn't change her calories at all. She got to a point where she was starting to be a little bit stagnant with her weight. So what we did was, and as you can see right here, she was averaging, I believe, roughly around 1,550 calories per day. So we made a slight calorie adjustment of 100 less calories per day. It might not seem like much, but as you can see from the results, it clearly propelled her into her continued fat loss, right? So If you're somebody who does, you know, want to continue to lose weight, you just might have to have a little bit more consistency and a little bit more, uh, a little bit more— I say quote unquote aggressive approach. 100 calories per day. I'm not telling you to fucking slash your calories by 1,000. That's fucking dumb. You want to simply make sure you make a slight adjustment, either again via increasing your step count. So if you're, you know, and if you're not tracking your steps, you should be tracking how many steps you get throughout the day. So if you can increase your step count, if you're getting 5,000 steps per day, try to get 8,000 steps per day. Or again, just making a slight adjustment in your calories. And again, that's for if you have been consistent enough and if you've waited long enough and if all the other things, by the way, are also trending in a stagnant position. Because if the scale weight isn't going down but your measurements and progress pictures keep coming down, I would not change much of anything because you are seeing tremendous progress. And so that is for somebody if you have a substantial amount of weight to lose. If you're somebody who, who maybe you have like 5 or 10 pounds to lose, and I get this all the time, people are like, how do I, how do I lose the last 5 pounds? How do I lose the last 10 pounds? If this is happening to you and your body recomping and you just like can't get the scale to go down, I would stop focusing on the scale. Like, stop, stop focusing on the number on the scale. Who gives a fuck if you weigh 155 or 150? Who really cares? And do you really think 5 pounds is going to make that big of a difference? Honestly, I'm going to tell you right now, a 5, a 5-pound difference, it is not going to make that much of a difference. No. So if you're somebody who the scale won't go down, but your body recomping, you're getting stronger, you're building muscle, your clothes fit better, you're seeing more muscle definition. If all of these positive things are your progress pictures look better, If all of these things are happening, you don't need to change anything. And the scale might not go down. You just might keep body recomping. And so, you know, if over 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, you continue to see the scale's kind of the same, but you're getting stronger, you're building muscle, you're looking better, your clothes fit better, there's nothing to adjust or fix or change. You're doing everything right. You're doing honestly. And again, do you really want to weigh 150? Or do you want to look good naked? Which one is it? If it's the first one, I— we need to have a conversation. But most people, it's the second one. So whether you weigh 150 or 155, fucking cares. Make sure you aren't falling into just looking at the scale. Make sure you are tracking other forms of data. I put up an entire video on how to track your fat loss progress, so feel free to go check that out. But essentially, make sure you're taking progress pictures, make sure you're taking measurements, and use the scale as one form of data that you are going to. Again, make sure you're not— 4 days goes by or 1 fucking week goes by and you haven't seen progress. Make sure you are being real with yourself here. Last but not least, segueing right into my last beg of you, please stop using the scale as your only form of data. Remember, all of this, all the stuff I talked about, measurements, progress pictures, your workouts, Everything, the scale, everything. It's all just data. So the more data that you have, the better you can look at things and say, all right, this is trending in the right direction. This is going good. I can see this is going there better. Whereas opposed to if all you're looking at is the scale, you have one piece of data, which by the way is the most fickle form of data anyway. You have one piece of data you're looking at as opposed to looking at all these other things Where all of these other things might be going tremendous, but you have these like horse blinders on and all you can fucking focus on is this piece of plastic and you're not seeing all these other things happening. So make sure you track data. And again, just remember, you cannot change on the scale that much, but you can absolutely change your physique and how your body looks and how you perform and how you feel, which is like you're in this journey anyway, aren't you? In this journey to Better how you look, better how you feel, get healthier. Why the fuck does it matter whether you weigh 142 or 150? It's one thing if you were, again, 70 pounds overweight. I get it. Like, that's unhealthy. That's not— like, you want to improve that for your health. I understand that. But if you're getting back down to, you know, the last 5 or 10 pounds, is your life really going to be that different weighing 143 instead of 148? Like, just ask yourself that. And I really like, how will it be different for quote unquote better and quote unquote for worse? Are you gonna have to restrict calories even more? Are you gonna have to do hours of cardio? Are you gonna have to not go out to eat on the weekends? Like, what is this going to require of you and is it worth it? And again, are you in this for a specific number or are you in this for actually feeling like a fucking badass, for lack of better terms? So that's what I'd say. Hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel and let me know below. Always love to hear from you, and we'll chat soon.