[throwaway74432]

"weight is not really a great measure" followed by saying you measure yourself by looking in the mirror, on an article about weight control is a pretty confusing way to communicate that you measure your health by looking in the mirror. you've made a few other confusing statements, like "Long term, higher intensity cardio builds muscle", so take this entire thread as another data point that you are not communicating your thoughts clearly or precisely.

>In any case, scales can lie too.

Can you stop with low effort bait please? Is it really worth our combined time to draw people in with silly statements about miscalibrated scales?

[lapcat]

> "weight is not really a great measure" followed by saying you measure yourself by looking in the mirror

No, it was "weight is not really a great measure" followed by saying "You can lose weight by losing muscle."

Body weight is everything, the good stuff (such as the aforementioned muscle) as well as the bad. And 50-60% of body weight is water, which you can gain or lose rapidly in various ways.

When people say they want to lose weight, often what they actually mean is that they want to lose their gut. Or maybe their butt. For health, for superficial reasons—i.e., looking good—or both. On men at least, the gut tends to be the last to go, so it's a pretty good indicator of how far you've gone, and how far you have left to go. As far as I'm concerned, body weight is "just a number", and it's unclear what the ultimate goal should be, whereas the appearance of your body is clearer to evaluate in terms of an end point. Moreover, it tends to change more slowly than weight, which is actually a good thing, because it's less random and arbitrary than total body weight.

> you've made a few other confusing statements, like "Long term, higher intensity cardio builds muscle"

I actually said "Long term, higher intensity cardio builds muscle and endurance", but for some reason people keep cutting off an essential part of my statement. It was followed by, "The more strenuously you exercise now, the more strenuously you'll be able to exercise in the future." In other words, building muscle and endurance now helps you to burn even more calories later. I'm not sure why that's confusing.

> Can you stop with low effort bait please? Is it really worth our combined time to draw people in with silly statements about miscalibrated scales?

This whole thread has been a waste of my time, and I should have just let your flagged reply die silently, but I'm kind of a glutton for punishment. I don't know why it's silly, though, to mention the imprecision of scales when you seem to be so focused on instantaneous, scientific precision.