Podcast 15

Do Smart Scales Actually Work?

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SHOW NOTES

Brian and Amy discuss the pros and cons of a smart scale and how using one properly can help you stay motivated and on track to hit your fitness goals. You will also learn how to avoid one of the most common mistakes people make with a smart scale that can derail them in the first few weeks of their fitness journey.

• What is a smart scale and how are they different? The major difference is the measurement of body composition and the connectivity of the associated apps. These kinds of scales allow you to more accurately track your relevant fitness metrics, and what gets tracked gets improved.
• Smart scales use a technology that has been around for decades called bioelectrical impedance. When you step on the scale it sends a small current through your body and can use the speed of the result to measure various body composition metrics. Getting the measurement of body composition regularly is a great way to see progress.
• When pursuing a fitness program, it’s important to track more than just bodyweight because of the increase in muscle mass and reduction of body fat.
• One issue that occasionally comes up when someone first starts using a smart scale is that you might notice that your body fat is going up, even though you may be losing weight and gaining muscle. This is because the measurement is based on the hydration within your body and that’s one of the first things someone sheds when beginning an exercise program.
• If you’re starting a new fitness habit, the first couple of weeks of smart scale measurements may be a bit misleading. It’s important to realize that the results will be more consistent and reliable over time.
• Smart scales are intended to be used at the same time each day. Hydration levels fluctuate throughout the day so using them at the same time will give you more consistent measurements. It’s also important to get more data points and measure your weight more often.
• When you get into a rhythm of measuring with a smart scale you can get enough data to say something meaningful about the trend over time. The pattern tends to look like a sawtooth on the day-to-day scale but over time you will be able to see the overall trend.
• All physiological changes tend to follow the same pattern.
• When it comes to which scale to purchase the app that comes along with it is very important. Accuracy and reliability are what you should be looking for.
• Knowing how much lean mass you have in your body is powerful information to know and a good indicator that your fitness and health are moving in the right direction.
• Maintaining optimal health and fitness is a journey, and a smart scale is a great tool that tells us we are moving in the right direction. They can also be a tool to fuel your motivation and assure you that the investment you are making is actually propelling towards the health and fitness you’re after.

We don’t want to spend too much time thinking about our weight on the scale. However, it really can be a very positive experience and something that really contributes to our motivation, our encouragement, and our improvement.

Welcome to the strength changes everything podcast. I’m Amy Hudson. And today my co host Brian Sagan and I are going to talk about smart scales. These are growing in popularity, you may have heard of a body fat scale or scales that can track different components of your fitness and give you some indications of things beyond just your total weight. So we’re going to break those down today, talking about what they are, why they’re more maybe beneficial than using a regular scale, what kind of information we can glean from them and recommendations as to types of smart scales you might want to consider and how you should use them. Ryan, how’s it going?

Doing well, Amy. Glad to be here.

Sweet.

Let’s just dive into this topic. So let’s just start off by talking about what smart scales are and the difference between a smart scale or a body fat scale and then a regular bathroom scale.

Sure, I think the main difference is one, just the measurement of body composition, or the percentage of body fat that someone has in the percentage of lean mass they have. And like you said, sometimes they’ll even share some other information, like hydration, etc. The other thing I think that makes the scale smart, though, is just that it’s connected, meaning that there’s an app that goes along with the scale. And you can just step on the scale, and And that information is shared to the cloud so that you can look at your mobile app and actually look at that tracked information over time.

Sure. So that’s always a good thing, right? We’re seeing this is the same philosophy we utilize within our app. coach studios, what gets measured gets done, what gets tracked gets improved. So we can track various components of our weight, our health and our body composition. So why would this be more beneficial than relying on a regular scale?

I think mainly the inclusion of that body composition measure. Now, this is a measure that’s been around and available for a long time. We’ve offered body composition measurements in our studios for many years, and also it’s using a technology people should really understand that’s been around for many decades. That scale that they’re using in their bathroom, that smart scale is using something called bioelectrical impedance. And so when you step on that scale, it’s just sending a really, really small current through your body and measuring the speed with which that current travels through your body. And then running that information through some algorithms that will estimate body composition.

And so I think it’s helpful to be able though, to get that measurement of body composition consistently at the same time. And it’s easier to do that at home. You’re only in the studio. If you’re going to an exercise coach or if you’re going someplace else, you’re only in the studio a certain number of days per week. Whereas you have the opportunity to step on the scale at home every day or nearly every day, which actually can be important.

For sure. Anytime we’re looking at our progress in this area, when it comes to weight or weight loss, or there are always people that come in and get started on an exercise program with the goal of losing weight. And we’ve talked about this in other podcasts. It’s actually very important to understand your progress as it relates to what muscle you may be adding and what body fat percentage you may be changing over time. And what we sometimes see. is when people get started on a strength training program.

is that they might notice themselves feeling stronger and more muscular even after six weeks, but maybe their body fat percentage doesn’t change if they’re measuring that body fat on a smart scale. So talk about that. Why might we see something happen like that where somebody’s total weight doesn’t change or even their body fat percentage may go up after they begin a strength training program?

Sure, that’s a really important question. And And we’ve actually got a blog post on this at exercisecoach . com. I think it’s called six tips to make your scale a super tool. And these scales really can be extremely helpful, but you do have to know how they work and how to use them. And so you’re bringing up just one issue that we address in that blog post that I would recommend, but you’re bringing up one issue.

And that is that when you use bioelectrical impedance, that early on in your experience, even as you start to lose weight and lose body fat, in many cases, you’ll actually notice that what this scale tells you your body fat percentages goes up. which can be really frustrating, but this is something that is actually predictable. And the reason is because this measurement is actually based on and involves looking at the hydration of the body and looking at water inside and out of your muscle cells. And it’s using this information to come up with the estimate of lean body mass and therefore body fat that you have on your body. Now, when you engage in new, healthy, whole food habits and strength training that actually impacts your body hormonally, you tend to get really quick results. Those results at first will include

lower insulin. And this leads to the retention of less fluids throughout the body, you actually are going to shed some bloating and some fluids throughout the body. And so someone might lose in the first couple weeks, they might lose six pounds or seven pounds on the scale And it’s a really good and important first step for them. But a lot of that might just be the loss of water. And so the measurement that is reflected looks a lot worse. What happens though, is once you lose the initial water weight, or at least some of it, the measurement sort of levels out so that as you go forward from there, you’ll start to see the body fat percentage coming down as you’re losing weight as long as we’re doing strength training in combination with that and you’re actually losing body fat.

So this is just a known experience when you use these scales. If you’re starting some new habits and you’re going to get the results that you want in the first couple weeks. You’ll actually see the measurement look worse, even though it’s not, until things level out and then the scale starts to actually measure things more accurately.

Going into it, you need to know this, but they become very useful after this because After this, they become very reliable, meaning the measurements become very repeatable and over time do detect change very well.

Yeah. And that’s actually a good transition into a question I would have for you is just how would you recommend people use these scales then if they purchase one? Yeah, that’s a great question. And so a couple of things I would mention, first of all, they’re really intended to be used at the same time of day. This is another advantage to having one at home versus having to go somewhere to get a body fat or weight measurement.

And because hydration impacts the recording or the measurement of body fat to such a degree, we need to measure at the same time of day because our hydration levels change throughout the day. And personally, I know I’m gonna get a more accurate reading, I think, later in the day and it’ll actually show a lower body fat percentage later in the day after I’ve actually had a chance to experience normal hydration. But if you’re going to do it first thing in the morning before you get started with your day, you’re going to be less hydrated, your body fat percentage will show a little higher. But as long as you do it consistently, we can actually get a good baseline and then track and measure improvement over time. So measuring at the same time of day is very important. Then the other thing I would say is just getting consistent measurements is really important.

And so I recommend getting a lot of data points. It really doesn’t help. And I know in some cases people will say, don’t get on the scale and get on it very infrequently. And I understand where people are coming from. We don’t want to spend too much time thinking about our weight on the scale. However, it really can be a very positive experience and something that really contributes to our motivation, our encouragement, and our improvement, and our understanding, really, if the program that we’re using is working, but only if we get pretty consistent measurements.

So think, for example, if there’s going to be some fluctuation, when you get on the scale, your weight can fluctuate from day to day. And so can your body fat percentage. So if we only get on that scale once every couple of weeks, you might just be having one of those days where your weight fluctuated and it doesn’t show you that you’ve actually been making progress. And so I would recommend getting on the scale every other day, every day. And again, it’s not for the purpose of placing too much emphasis on what you weigh on the scale.

It’s for the purpose of tracking trend over time. This is what’s so important. One day me, just anybody else, I might get on the scale and man, my weight’s up a half a pound. I don’t like that. But. When I’m in the habit of actually weighing on one of these scales, it gets weight and body fat.

And I’m in the habit of doing that with regularity on a rhythm.

And I’d say, just pick the rhythm is if it’s not going to be every day, maybe make it every other day, maybe make it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but make it frequent enough that we can get enough data points that you can actually say something meaningful about the trend over time, because that’s really the purpose of using these scales. Yeah. And one thing that there’s an image actually in the blog post you referenced, which we can probably link to in our show notes here, and it’s a sawtooth. So it’s a sawtooth pattern. When you track your weight over time for a lot of people, many people, and of course people’s needs differ person to person, but many people ideally would like to lose body fat and gain healthy muscle tissue in their body. The more muscle you have, muscle is the healthiest tissue in the body.

That’s a great indicator of health and fitness. And then the lower your body fat in your body, the healthier you’ll be. And so we’re looking for healthy ranges on those things. But when you collect all those data points over time, let’s say over the course of a year, you’re gonna see a pattern emerge where it does look like a sawtooth. So if you picture the blades of a saw, one day it may be up, one day it may be down. But the overall trend, you can see when you zoom out and take a bigger picture approach to say, overall, am I losing body fat over time?

Am I gaining strength over time? And that’s a helpful way to look at it, I would say. It’s so important. Yeah, really all changes, all physiological change happens.

According to this kind of pattern, whether it’s weight loss or body fat loss or strength, exactly like you said, over time, you’re simply going to see this wavy or sawtooth up and down pattern. It’s such a great point. What would you say, Brian, are the most important factors in somebody deciding which brand or which type of.

smart scale to purchase? Do you have any recommendations on that? Yeah. I think that a couple of things that come to mind, just the, the app that comes along with it, I think is important. And I’ve just noticed that the app and that the usability, the relative accuracy and the repeatability of a couple of scales are better than some of the others. I personally like any of the Fitbit scales or the Tanita scales, I think work really well.

really well. And again, it is important though, I said accuracy, it is important to just make the distinction between accuracy and reliability. And so any measure of body composition, so body fat percentage, whether it’s a bio impedance scale, or it’s skinfold calipers, or using a tape measure, there’s so many different ways to estimate body fat percentage, they’re all estimates. And they all as a measurement tool have inherent in the methodology a degree of error as a standard. And so same thing with body fat scales, there simply is a standard error of estimate that is several percentage points. And so if you get on one of these scales, and it says you’re 22 % body fat, we know with a high degree of certainty that you are probably like plus or minus three of 22%.

That’s not super accurate. But What’s more important is the reliability. I really like to emphasize the reliability versus the precision or the accuracy. If it says you’re 22 % today, and four months from now, it says you’re 22%, you can be really confident that nothing really changed.

But if it says you’re 17%, you can be really confident that you made some amazing strides. And so just focus on reliability, change trend over time. And these scales that I’ve mentioned, I would say are really reliable, if they’re used at the same time each day.

For sure.

Yeah, hopefully you found this information helpful. When it comes to your health, it’s not only your weight is one number on a scale, and that’s really just measuring the Earth’s gravitational pull on your body, correct, Brian? Exactly. But when it comes to your health, the muscle mass you have, your lean mass in your body, that healthy tissue as related to or compared to your body fat is really helpful information to know.

And it’s helpful to get that full picture of what your body composition is so you can understand when you are going in the right direction. Obviously, strength training is a huge piece of that and nutrition is a huge piece of that. And that’s what we’re here to provide. Yeah, and right direction, I think is the way to say it. For many years, I think it was really emphasized that you need to be in a certain range of body fat in order to be healthy. Today, man, I really, I think you nailed it.

I really think it’s really about moving in the right direction. As we talked about on the podcast a few weeks ago, the first 5 % of weight loss that someone experiences. So the first several percentage points of body fat loss that someone experiences contribute just a disproportionate amount of the positive benefits that someone is going to get from their weight loss from a health standpoint. And these scales and measuring body fat are a great way to tell us if we’re moving in the right direction. And this journey of achieving and maintaining optimal health and fitness is just that it’s a journey.

And so it’s just so important to just know that we’re moving in the right direction, or know that we’re holding our ground over time. And then sometimes to see I’m starting to slip a little bit here. But the scale doesn’t need to be used as a tool that just puts some evaluation on you today as to whether or not you’re where you should be or you’re healthy or not, but they can be used as a tool to really fuel your motivation and assure you that the investment that you’re making in new healthy exercise and eating habits are actually propelling you towards the health and fitness that you’re after. Love it. It’s totally true. 100 % agree.

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