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I wish I could convince every woman I know to never step on a scale ever again. Too many women base their self worth on what the scale says. Their self-esteem plummets as the number on the scale gets larger or doesn't get smaller. The women I know who have the hardest time losing weight are the ones who weigh themselves every day.

My advice to my weight loss clients is to only weigh once a week (we do that anyway in my class in order to track everyone's progress) and maximum twice a week. A woman's weight can fluctuate anywhere from 3 to 10 lbs. a day due to changes in water weight or water retention and how much you eat. You gain weight in the course of an average day just because you're eating and drinking throughout the day.

The scale is not your friend. If it were up to me we wouldn't even have a scale in my gym at all. We have to have it, though, in order to figure out our members' body fat percentage. You can calculate a person's body fat by using only circumference measurements but it requires a bit more math. I use circumference measurements with my personal training clients and they never step on a scale in front of me, but at the gym we use an Omron body fat analyzer which requires that you enter the person's weight.

I spend a fair amount of my time at the gym trying to convince my ladies that they need to stay away from the scale. It's the ladies who are obsessive about weighing themselves that look at me as if I have 3 heads for proposing such a preposterous idea. Those ladies that obsessively weigh themselves have the hardest time losing weight compared to those who rarely step on the scale.

Weight only tells you one thing: what you weigh. It doesn't tell you your how much lean muscle you have or what size you are. It's just a number. When my diet group ladies start going on about how much weight they lost or didn't lose I stop them and ask them how much body fat they lost. Some of my ladies are elated that they lost 3 or 5 lbs. in a week and others are crushed that they only lost 1 lb. I spend time focusing on how much body fat they are losing and how exponentially they are losing MORE body fat pounds compared to weight on the scale pounds.

Losing body fat is far more important than losing weight. As you lose body fat you will also lose weight, some of which is excess water. What I usually ask my clients is: What does it matter what you weigh if you're the size you want to be and your body fat is in a healthy range? Fat is large and jiggly while muscle takes up less space and is tight and hard although heavier. So which do you want more of, fat (large) or muscle (small)?

If you took the same amount of lean muscle and body fat and weighed them on a scale, the lean muscle would weight 3X more. Muscle is dense. Muscle is metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you have the higher your metabolism will be. You'll be smaller but you will most likely weigh more but it will be the right kind of weight, lean muscle mass.

I not a fan of the BMI rating scale either. Body fat percentage is much more individual and specific than body mass index which I feel is way too general. Two people could have the same BMI while one could be a fat' skinny person and the other could be a lean heavy' person.

Focusing on fat loss is helpful in overcoming an addiction to the scale. The less fat you carry around, as opposed to weight, the thinner you will be.

Learn more about this author, Sabrina Peterson.
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