Social Media Can Be Worse Than Your Scale: The Unedited Original
This is the raw take behind my YouTube video Social media can be worse than your scale, recorded the day before that upload. The words are the same; the YouTube cut is about 20 seconds shorter and starts at "I want to talk to you a little bit about social media". This original opens by reading the title out loud first. If you want the full write-up, with the evidence on what real weight-loss rates look like, read the post for the YouTube version. This page covers what the original shows and one point I'd push harder now.
In this recording
- [0:01] Title read out: social media can be worse than your scale. People say don't weigh yourself all the time, and I agree. I think social media, especially keto groups, can be more damaging.
- [0:52] Not everything posted is true. Some people stretch their starting weight, how long they've been dieting or how many dress sizes they've lost. And people pick their very best and very worst moments to compare.
- [1:23] When most of what you see is everyone's most dramatic improvement and you're on an average day, you almost always look like a failure. Some posted rates of loss aren't reasonable or healthy. Nobody questions them because it isn't polite, and some of those people may be crash dieting or have developed an eating disorder.
- [1:53] Starting points differ. If you'd already cut sugary foods and weren't overeating, and someone else goes straight from a high junk-food diet to keto, their early results will look far more dramatic, partly from salt and water.
- [2:24] Comparing yourself to others can be more dangerous than the scale. Watch how much you look at social media the same way you watch the scale.
The line I'd push harder: your baseline isn't their baseline
Of the four reasons in this clip, the starting-point one gets the least time and matters the most. Two people can both "start keto" on the same day and be starting very different changes. One is going from fast food, soda and a lot of salt to a low-carb diet. The other had already dropped sugar a year ago. The first person will drop a lot of water and stored carbohydrate in the first weeks, and the scale will show it. The second won't, because they already did that part.
I covered the water side of this the day before, in my video about a 5-pound overnight gain (video f9P8BPWHc4U), and the general "it took years to put on" point in my goals video (video Ewo-C_Cc4hU). The social media version is the same idea turned outward: the big number in someone's post may be mostly the size of the change they made, not how well they're doing.
What the evidence pages say about "normal" results
The before-and-after feed makes big losses look typical. The trials on the evidence pages show what an average result actually looks like.
In DIETFITS, 609 adults followed a healthy low-fat or healthy low-carb diet for 12 months. Average losses were 5.3 kg and 6.0 kg, not significantly different (Gardner 2018). In the two-year DIRECT trial, average losses were 2.9 kg on low-fat, 4.4 kg on Mediterranean and 4.7 kg on low-carb (Shai 2008).
Those are averages, so some people lost a lot more and some lost less. But they are nothing like the typical keto group feed. If your results look like those numbers, you're doing what most people in a controlled study did.
When to talk to someone
I said in the clip that some of the people posting dramatic losses may be crash dieting or have an eating disorder. If comparing yourself is pushing you to eat less and less, or you have a history of an eating disorder, talk to your doctor before you go further with any restrictive diet. The guide's eating disorders page covers this.
Then vs now
In November 2018, in a live on maintenance, I came back to the scale-obsessed side of this: once you stop losing weight you lose all the "down 10 pounds" answers to the people around you, and you have to find other measures (live GBSN3916). The 2017 clip was about comparing yourself to strangers. The 2018 one was about the people in your own life. Same problem, closer to home.
Key points
- Social media can do more damage than the scale, especially keto groups.
- Posts are often exaggerated and always cherry-picked.
- Some fast rates aren't healthy, and nobody asks how they were done.
- Your starting point isn't theirs. A bigger change shows a bigger early drop.
- Ration social media the way you ration the scale.
Related
- Guide: Non-scale progress · Water weight · Eating disorders
- Blog: Comparing weight loss on social media · How often to weigh yourself · Realistic weight-loss goals · Keto forums and confirmation bias
- Videos: The YouTube version · Gained 5 pounds overnight? · Setting realistic goals · Maintenance live, 2018