#BEATTHEBELLY Tip - How To Weigh Yourself

So you decide to weigh in.
Maybe not in the village hall with all the female weight watchers crowd, but in the privacy of your bathroom.

How do you weigh yourself accurately? 10 pence in a machine on the seafront used to give you a few minutes looking at the view with a telescope or a ride on one of those old fashioned weighing machines with a big dial.

These days scales are pretty accurate if on a hard surface and can include electronic measure of your body fat and even work out your BMI. Bear in mind fat percentage is calculated by measuring electrical impedance through your skin so if your feet are wet it might get skewed! Also if your upper body is not involved with hand sensors then you are only measuring how much fat you have in your legs and bum!

As you may know I am not a big fan of BMI (it tells me I am overweight at BMI 28) as it is not helpful as a measure for individuals or some racial groups or body types as a true measure of what a healthy weight should be. It was created to help predict diseases on a population level when in 1970 they thought an average man was 70kg. After all you might weigh in as a body builder with an obese BMI from all the muscle mass, but how many active body builders have you seen with a large belly or builders bottom?

I digress for a minute to explain that we are all getting bigger with time, not just fatter but bigger/taller - we are better nourished and babies are larger at birth on average these days. For example see my post on my Grampa - he was one of the heaviest forwards in the Scotland Rugby pack in 1938 at 14.5 stone and 6"1. Now you would expect a forward to be at least 18 stone >6"4 and some of the backs too. We are just getting bigger, mostly because of high energy diet.

So these measures may be misrepresentative or miss the point, hence my reasoning for a simple predictive abdominal circumference measure all guys can use on the widest part of the belly at rest (not the waist).

Ok so enough banter, down to the practical:

- get some scales you trust, use the same ones.
- weigh yourself in the natural without clothes (no excuses)
- weigh at the same time of day/week (my best time = after a morning dump, before breakfast while the shower is warming up)
- only take note of the trend of your weight, don't worry about daily fluctuations of a few lb/G
- track weight over time with weekly recording to see if you are truly losing/gaining weight.

It can become obsessive; ironically sometimes you will see a spike or drop of weight gain or loss which can be impressive but without effort- mostly due to fluid retention from issues like long haul flights or fluid loss with diarrhoea and vomiting. e.g. I lost 1kg the day after a 2 hour flight from Europe without any illness or exercise - I had felt stiff the day before and suspect the extra weight was mainly fluid retention from salty Italian food and lack of movement on the flight home.


Dr Ben Sinclair
Sinclair Health Limited
07403110640
https://www.optimiseclinic.co.uk
Twitter: @menshealthtips
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