I am not a fan of the body weight scale. A body composition scale may be more useful. A body weight measurement as part of a suite of health bio-markers is useful, especially when followed over time to identify trends. Increased body weight can indicate an improvement in health.
So many times in this forum have I seen the mental ill-health that numbers on a scale can inflict.
I’m not fond of scales either. We also had one that did body fat, but it relied on hydration. Overnight, you’re less hydrated, so always got a worse body fat percentage. And who wants to weigh themselves also at night?
I gave up also because there were several times where I had to move my belt up one hole, yet the scale didn’t move. (This is where the body composition scale would help…if they worked.)
I would also “lose” 5 pounds when I fasted 32+ hours, and there’s no way I actually lost that as fat. When that happens, though, it’s harder to track what’s really happening with weight.
Before my Keto journey (10+ years ago) I did a DEXA scan which is the gold standard for measuring fat, muscle and bone density. I continue to do them 1x per year. I do weigh myself on a medical scale 4-3x per week. I graph this info with the level of activity and try to see if there are any trends. I can then self-correct if needed. For example, I noticed that my level of physical activity increases on the weekend and that I eat more Sunday and Monday. My weight does go up slightly on Monday and Tuesday and back down on Wednesday.
I do find that the belt technique (change holes) is very effective at measuring fat gain and loss.
DEXA scans are great. Where I live, they are hard to find (for fat/muscle; everywhere has them for bone mass), and they’re are expensive. I remember paying quite a large sum for 3 of them.
I’ve seen them advertised much cheaper in other locations of the country, though.
Edit: I remember the price now. It was $500 for 3 DEXA scans, and I had to get them done in a year. And it was over an hour’s drive one way from my house, and another 90 minutes to work.
Ever look at Dexascan.com? many of them do deals through them. I have 2 places I use, one is $85, one is $100, plus of the pricier one is they do a better combo deal with RMR testing, although my new macro tracker app makes that pretty useless now.
You have a macro tracker app that does RMR?
I took a look and there’s one “near” me (17 miles away). They do list RMR, but not prices.
If I had the time, I’d love to get an RMR the first day of a 4.5 day fast, then at the 4.5 day point. That’s several hours out of my day, each time, though.
TDEE, but ya, gets it dead on after a couple weeks. You weight daily and it figures out your normal fluctuations and as you give it your daily weights it’ll record that but also give you a true weight estimate and that’s what it uses to make it’s decisions not the daily scale weight.
The RMR prices are usually pretty doable, but are DEXAs so maybe not there sadly.
I did a DEXA before starting keto as well. The dietician’s bioimpedance monitor calibrated well with the DEXA results. Downside is the radiation exposure in a DEXA scan.
I like the look of Dr. Sean O’Mara’s work with affordable MRI, and the simple lying on your back measurement biomarker test for visceral fat.
