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Water loss VS fat loss



 
 
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  #11  
Old December 5th, 2008, 06:07 PM posted to alt.support.diet
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Posts: 502
Default Water loss VS fat loss

On 5 déc, 11:33, "
wrote:
On 5 déc, 10:11, Doug Freyburger wrote:





" wrote:


Off the point you guys are making, but two things that may make some
people curious about weight fluctuation:


You give two examples of why it is a bad idea to get on the
scale *more than once per day. *Doing so very often tends to
be obsessive behavior with irrational motives because the time
scale for fat loss is month to month (not a single dieter in
history likes the fact but disliking a fact does not convert it
to fiction) - Getting on the scale more than once per day is
wishing for that which is physically impossible.


I often weight one pound less
between the time I go to sleep and the time I wake up even though I
did not visit the washroom.


I sweat while I sleep in addition to breathing. *Sweat is
water and therefor not fat. *Taking readings inside of a
single day can only tell me about water, food, liquid,
stuff moving through my bowels and so on. *None of that
is fat and therefore no extra readings per day can
possibily have a rational reason related to a program
aimed at fat loss. *Of course motivation to start dieting
in the first place is often an emotional decision not an
objective mecdical decision.


I brought the point a few years ago, and
someone said the water loss is in the breathing. The second thing is
that I sometimes weight one more pound after taking a shower. Did my
body really suck up a pound of water?


Does your scale really have an accuracy and repeatability
of less than a pound? *No. *Back in junior high school
science classes I remember learning about error bars and
estimating the size of data errors when doing experiments.
Is this no longer taught in schools? *Given the confusion
two presidential elections ago when the vote in Florida came
out closer than the size of the error bars I guess not. *All
instrumentation has some amount of error built into its
readings.


I understand what you're saying. But why is that when the weight
changes in those examples, it's always downwards in the case of a
night sleep and always upwards in the case of a shower? If it was just
a scale malfunction, then should not it be the way around at least
sometimes? How many *scales will I have to try until I'm convinced
that the phenomenon I'm talking about is real and not just some kind
of scale malfunction?- Masquer le texte des messages précédents -

- Afficher le texte des messages précédents -


Or are you saying that these phenomenon are real, but there is no way
I can tell if the difference is really one pound because the scale is
not accurate enough?
  #12  
Old December 5th, 2008, 07:59 PM posted to alt.support.diet
Doug Freyburger
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Posts: 1,866
Default Water loss VS fat loss

" wrote:
wrote:

Does your scale really have an accuracy and repeatability
of less than a pound? *No. *Back in junior high school
science classes I remember learning about error bars and
estimating the size of data errors when doing experiments.
Is this no longer taught in schools? *Given the confusion
two presidential elections ago when the vote in Florida came
out closer than the size of the error bars I guess not. *All
instrumentation has some amount of error built into its
readings.


I understand what you're saying. But why is that when the weight
changes in those examples, it's always downwards in the case of a
night sleep and always upwards in the case of a shower? If it was just
a scale malfunction, then should not it be the way around at least
sometimes? How many *scales will I have to try until I'm convinced
that the phenomenon I'm talking about is real and not just some kind
of scale malfunction?

Or are you saying that these phenomenon are real, but there is no way
I can tell if the difference is really one pound because the scale is
not accurate enough?


That's part of my point. The scale isn't accurate to really know the
difference between a pound up and the dial jiggling a little.

I've seen the scale go down after sweating in a hot shower. I suspect
what you're seeing isn't really your body soaking up water. Skin does
not aborb water like that that I know of and while lungs do the amount
of
steam inhaled in a shower is far too small for a pound. At first I
wondered if you step on the scale still wet but it takes a half liter
of
water to have a pound and there's no way I can hold that much water
as droplets on my skin and in my hair.

My bigger point is that because the time scale for loss is month to
month not before and after a shower, there's no useful data to be
gotten by stepping on the scale before and after a shower. No matter
what causes the difference in the readings it's not fat.

I think nearly everyone diets to lose stored fat not water. And/or
they
diet to lose size and pounds are merely a side effect of the size.
The scale measures both fat and water and everything else because
it all reacts to gravity. That's the problem - Changing water effects
the scale so it's easy to think some progress has been made because
the reading on the scale changed. This ends up a self defeating
approach because not matter how you try to look at it water isn't fat
and water loss is easily reversed into water regain for no apparent
reason. Too frequent use of the scale tends to put focus on the small
changes not on the trend. It's too much like listening to the static
on
a radio rather than tuning to a station.

If there were a magic scale that accurately mesured only fat it would
be far more useful to most of us than our current scales. Body fat
percentage scales attempt this but they seem to be quite inaccurate
in the current generations.

Why would someone really want to lose water not just to see the
scale drop? Wrestlers doing a weigh in. Folks with bloating issues.
Those are the ones I can think of.

Why would someone really want to lose weight not size and not
care if the weight was fat, water or lean? Folks so heavy they have
foot damage are the ones I can think of who need to lose so much
losing lean doesn't matter early on. Those are the ones I can think
of.

But the scale doesn't just measure fat or lean. More's the pity.
  #13  
Old December 7th, 2008, 01:19 AM posted to alt.support.diet
James G
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Posts: 113
Default Water loss VS fat loss

On Dec 4, 7:30*pm, "
wrote:
On 4 déc, 18:11, James G wrote:



On Dec 4, 11:02*am, Doug Freyburger wrote:


It's a conundrum - Folks should only get on the scale at a
frequency they can handle emotionally, but folks need to know
their random water retnetion swing to know how to set their
maintenance swing range. *It means weighings need to be
done in a way as to gradually build emotional ability to handle
them.


Good point. *I always forget that other people don't like to weigh
themselves daily.


Personally, I find myself lucky to never swing more than a pound or
two, weighing myself in the morning like this.


Off the point you guys are making, but two things that may make some
people curious about weight fluctuation: I often weight one pound less
between the time I go to sleep and the time I wake up even though I
did not visit the washroom. I brought the point a few years ago, and
someone said the water loss is in the breathing. The second thing is
that I sometimes weight one more pound after taking a shower. Did my
body really suck up a pound of water?


Between transpiration (sweating) and whatever moisture happens to
leave via your breath, sure. Personally, I find my acetone breath the
worst in the morning. If you saw this phenomenon between meals and
visits to the washroom during the day, you probably wouldn't think
twice about it. Your body is still running, so you're burning up
energy.

Now, a pound I'm not so sure about; If I weigh myself before/after
sleep, I usually see something on the order of a tenth of a pound
(usually around 0.4 lbs). Doug makes good points, and it's generally
inadvisable to get on the scale more than once a day. In fact, most
people advocate only weighing yourself every 3 days, or once a week.
As Yogi Berra said, "90% of this game is half-mental." If you let
yourself get caught up on the numbers too much, you get distracted
from your goal, and that leads to screwing up.


But the point about scales and precision is an important one. If your
scale isn't consistent, throw it away.
  #14  
Old December 7th, 2008, 01:25 AM posted to alt.support.diet
James G
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Posts: 113
Default Water loss VS fat loss

On Dec 5, 1:59*pm, Doug Freyburger wrote:

But the scale doesn't just measure fat or lean. *More's the pity.


Unless you really spoil yourself and get a scale that's capable of
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA). You can measure your percent
body fat to a reasonable degree of accuracy (I believe most are
accurate to within a tenth of a percent).

In particular, I have the Weight Watchers one made by Conair. I put
in my age, height, and athlete/non-athlete to the scale when I
purchased it, and now, I can get my weight, body fat %, water %
(really interesting feature, if not totally useless), and BMI (which
is just convenient. I calculate mine as a passing novelty, because I
know I'll never be at the 'perfect' BMI because of my frame size.)
In fact, it also does % Bone Mass, which I find fascinating. I'm not
really sure what procedure it's using or how accurate it is, but it's
interesting. It also tares itself every time you use it (you have to
tap it, wait for it to zero itself, THEN step on), which is helpful.

The scale cost ~$30 I think. I know the one I had before was
manufactured by Taylor USA, and cost me about $25. But it was a bit
of a piece of junk, and started showing overload errors (LOL) when I
would use it. So I RMA'd it and gave it to my parents to replace
their ancient spring/dial scale.
  #15  
Old December 7th, 2008, 04:28 PM posted to alt.support.diet
Doug Freyburger
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Posts: 1,866
Default Water loss VS fat loss

James G wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:

But the scale doesn't just measure fat or lean. *More's the pity.


Unless you really spoil yourself and get a scale that's capable of
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA). *You can measure your percent
body fat to a reasonable degree of accuracy (I believe most are
accurate to within a tenth of a percent).


Years ago these were notoriously inaccurate. Has this changed
with the advance of technology? They used to use electrical
resistance in the feet to estimate body fat percentage. To the
extent that manages to run a current from leg to leg it still
misses the belly. I played soccer in high school and to this day
have muscular legs with good definition so my fat is belly and
upper body - How could a scale figure that out?
  #16  
Old December 7th, 2008, 09:09 PM posted to alt.support.diet
James G
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Posts: 113
Default Water loss VS fat loss

On Dec 7, 10:28*am, Doug Freyburger wrote:

Unless you really spoil yourself and get a scale that's capable of
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA). *You can measure your percent
body fat to a reasonable degree of accuracy (I believe most are
accurate to within a tenth of a percent).


Years ago these were notoriously inaccurate. *Has this changed
with the advance of technology? *They used to use electrical
resistance in the feet to estimate body fat percentage. *To the
extent that manages to run a current from leg to leg it still
misses the belly. *I played soccer in high school and to this day
have muscular legs with good definition so my fat is belly and
upper body - How could a scale figure that out?


This is beginning to exit the realm of my knowledge about BIA, but I
believe as long as that assumption is made (ie. by setting the
athletic flag on my particular scale), the equations used
(specifically, to calculate TBW and lean content; fat mass is the
difference between these... %BF = (TBW - lean)/TBW ) can be adjusted
to compensate for it.

But it's all moot to me. I don't have this particular build, so I
believe my BIA to be reasonably accurate (it is consistent with the
BIA measurements I had taken when I wrestled; they introduced
periodic body fat measurements to ensure people weren't losing weight
too fast between matches). And what REALLY matters to me is the
decrease in the values of weight and %BF. I don't really care if I
happen to weigh 3lbs more than my scale is reporting. I care about
the precision (consistency with self) of the scale, because I'm
interested in the change in my body weight/fat. I already know the
value to my desired accuracy: "too much."

Further reading on BIA:

http://florey.biosci.uq.edu.au/BIA/index.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv....section.25999
 




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