You Don't Need Bathroom Scales to Lose Weight

So you think that you are overweight (or else your doctor tells you that you are overweight) and you want to lose twenty pounds. He pressure is on you to buy a half-decent set of bathroom scales so that you will be able to see yourself losing those pounds, right?

Don't bother.

Save your money.

Here is a thought experiment: Imagine that you already have a bathroom scale. Now imagine that you step on it and step off it. Repeat nineteen times. You have now weighed yourself twenty times in just under two minutes.

Have you lost any weight?

Of course not!

The act of stepping on to, and off from a bathroom scale does not affect your weight.

You weight the same as you did two minutes ago.

So what causes a weight loss?

In this context, a change of diet, more exercise, moderation in volumes of food and so on - all the things you can read in Modern Householder, or that you can be told by your doctor.

All that the bathroom scales can tell you is that a change of diet or exercise sends your weight in the correct direction.

Which you believed would happen anyway. Otherwise, why go on the diet or the treadmill?

And in particular, if you thought that diet or exercise or moderation wasn't going to work and therefore your heart wasn't in it, why buy the scales anyway/

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