Inches in Weight Loss: Ripe for Misdirection

There needs to be some standard for loss of inches during weight loss, because as it stands, this can be used for deceitful results.

There is no scientific standard in this type of reporting although it purports to be more of a real measurement than weight loss by weight or mass. The reasoning goes that muscle is denser than fat so if you’ve changed a lot of fat into muscle you could be slimmer but weigh more.

I was first turned off the loss of inches for a weight loss mechanism because you just simply added together losses from your arms and waist and other parts. Obviously differing body parts have different healthy states than each other so a straight forward addition to me is equating apples with oranges.

So let’s look at the first way measurement can be abused. Let’s say you’ve lost one inch off your waist and five pounds of overall weight loss. You can measure more than just your waist to add up the inches lost. Moving your measuring tape a width away from your waist also will give a measurement loss. Let’s say the two positions below and above give a ¾ of an inch loss. You can keep going. Perhaps there are two 5/8 of an inch and two ½ inch losses. In other words, from that 5 pounds or 1 inch lost on the waist there is nothing to stop us from adding up the fraction of an inch losses on the rest of the belly. So that 1 inch loss on the waist can become a 6 inch loss on the whole of the belly.

And we haven’t even said what we are losing with those inches. Perhaps we could take a female with really long hair. We could cut 10 inches of hair off her and lose a couple pounds of hair weight. That’s right we can claim she lost 10 inches and a couple pounds without doing a lick of exercising or dieting.

Be especially wary of losses that don’t involve any weight. “I lost 8 inches with no diet or exercise” could simply mean that the model is simply pulling in her stomach as tightly as she can.

Even more important is to give a wide berth to any adult male that says he lost a couple inches in only a few minutes of a program. Do not make eye contact with these males and try to stay disengaged. Just like with hair, inches can mean anything.