The smart scale is a liar
I’m sure some of you have smart scales that can track not only your weight but also changes in muscle mass, water balance, body fat percentage, and even possibly visceral fat.
These numbers other than body weight are probably not correct. Or, more correctly, they are for your legs (except for those scales that you not only stand on but have to hold a lever with your hand). Right. Don’t get hung up on your body fat percentage or visceral fat score.
The fault lies in the smart scale’s technique in determining these data. When you stand barefoot on the scale, it sends small electrical pulses from one foot to the other. It calculates based on the resistance your body is showing. But the electrical pulse is looking for the shortest path; it doesn’t go all the way to your belly; it turns back at about your groin, so it only measures your legs there and back. Not your belly. Not your arms. Only your legs. The algorithms’ averaging can be particularly fallacious for people with uneven fat and muscle distribution.
In addition, your body’s water content has a significant impact on the measurement of resistance, i.e. how well or poorly you conduct current: being dehydrated or over-hydrated can skew the results.
Because the pulse does not pass through the torso, the scale cannot measure visceral fat directly. Again, leg-sensor-only scales cannot measure visceral fat. They can only guess.
If you keep looking at the values on your scale, you might notice this algorithm error yourself. I became suspicious that at a certain weight, only my visceral fat value changed. During the weight loss, my weight did not go straight down but went down in a “sawtooth” fashion, so I was the same weight several times - and interestingly, my visceral fat value always changed in the same place. Or, just after a week of active weight training, my body fat percentage increased proportionally, not my muscle mass. So you can catch these errors; you just have to pay attention.
So, what’s the takeaway? I’ve shifted my focus to simply monitoring my body weight on the scale. Given the uncertainty about the scale’s accuracy, what truly matters to me is the week-to-week change, not the specific numbers it displays.