I've had a funny morning realizing something so hilarious, because it has to do with fitness influencers.
The funny thing about them is they don’t know how to do math. Another thing is that they’re marketing to how stupid their audience is, hoping whoever sees it will buy into their logic — or lack thereof.
I notice a lot of women claiming they lost over 100+ pounds, but their bodies don’t look big enough to support that claim. One I came across said she lost 135 pounds, and she had two before‑and‑after pictures side by side. She’s lying through her teeth about the weight loss because… the math doesn't add up. When it comes to the weight of fat versus muscle, fat is always lighter. Muscle and skeletal frame density add to the number on the scale because they’re heavier than fat. There’s also water weight to consider. And you have to consider height. Tall women with stockier skeletal frames are always going to be heavier than a petite 4'9" lady who looks like you could snap her like a twig.
The picture she showed of her “thicker” self is not 135 pounds of fat or water loss. And if she lost muscle and skeletal density, that’s counterintuitive — that would mean she’s at risk for fractures and basically a frail little lady. Losing 135 pounds would mean she was close to 300 pounds to begin with, and that image was not 300 pounds. It looked more like 190, closer to 200.
I’m 5'5". My heaviest weight — where I needed to lean out or drop weight, just to be clear — I was thicker than her because I had thicker thighs and a bigger ass. I was 202 pounds. The weight I lost to become my leanest was only 32 pounds, which put me at a stable 170. I was fatter than her.
In the first 2 pictures, I was 202 pounds. Certain camera angles really trick the eye, huh? Those images were taken the same day out with my best friend.
In the last 2 images, I weighed a whopping 170. I don't look strong, but I'm a tough cookie. Working in manual labor makes you a deceiving tough cookie. A tough cookie with a bad back.
But...
Five pounds of fat looks like a big glob about the length of a forearm and probably the thickness of a man with big biceps — but without the heaviness that comes from actual muscle. So that woman would have to be taller than me, with more muscle and more fat, to lose 135 pounds. For her size, she didn’t look big enough in her picture to have that much mass to lose. She looked about the same in terms of the before body image as mine.
The reason I’m mentioning this is because people lie. The real weight loss wasn’t 135; it was 35. She added the “1” to make it 135 so it sounded more dramatic. And you know, even thicker people have muscle. Being heavier‑set means you naturally have more muscle in your legs — it’s what keeps you mobile, taking on most of the stress of carrying your body around. So when someone loses too much on the scale, that tells me they lost muscle, because fat doesn’t weigh that much.
Also, inflammation can add anywhere from 5 to 25 pounds of extra weight on the scale. I’m one of the unlucky folks who retain 15 to 25 pounds of additional water from inflammation.
There… you are informed.
But this is for the lovely ladies who are body image-conscious and always worrying about the scale. The scale is bullshit.
