My “unless you’re a bodybuilder” caveat was just to point out that if you have, say, over a third bodyfat then you surely want your scale weight to go down as a side effect of losing the bodyfat, unless you also want to add massive amounts of muscle.
But we do mostly agree about the physiology and you definitely should add muscle as part of “weight loss”. Muscle pretty much burns calories just sitting there, so it’s a huge help. I definitely recommend some weight training as part of any fitness plan. Losing weight by just eating less can often be a death spiral where you have to keep eating less and less as your metabolism adapts to the fewer calories. The human body is impressively adept at maintaining its weight. Another thing I recommend is having occasional flat spots on your “yellow brick road”. If it’s hard to keep from gaining, let alone losing, then you’re doing it wrong.
I guess we’re getting far afield from the anti-akrasia aspects though. Again, kibotzer is agnostic about what metric you use to measure your progress, though the simpler it is to measure the better. (And we’ve put thought into the case of scale weight as a metric, figuring out how to adjust for random fluctuations and how to avoid losing weight the wrong way, like you’re talking about.)
So I think we agree, “seriously restricted diets” are bad news and muscle gain should be part of any “weight loss” plan. But for most people that still means a gradually decreasing scale weight so I stand by it as a useful metric.
My “unless you’re a bodybuilder” caveat was just to point out that if you have, say, over a third bodyfat then you surely want your scale weight to go down as a side effect of losing the bodyfat, unless you also want to add massive amounts of muscle.
But we do mostly agree about the physiology and you definitely should add muscle as part of “weight loss”. Muscle pretty much burns calories just sitting there, so it’s a huge help. I definitely recommend some weight training as part of any fitness plan. Losing weight by just eating less can often be a death spiral where you have to keep eating less and less as your metabolism adapts to the fewer calories. The human body is impressively adept at maintaining its weight. Another thing I recommend is having occasional flat spots on your “yellow brick road”. If it’s hard to keep from gaining, let alone losing, then you’re doing it wrong.
I guess we’re getting far afield from the anti-akrasia aspects though. Again, kibotzer is agnostic about what metric you use to measure your progress, though the simpler it is to measure the better. (And we’ve put thought into the case of scale weight as a metric, figuring out how to adjust for random fluctuations and how to avoid losing weight the wrong way, like you’re talking about.)
So I think we agree, “seriously restricted diets” are bad news and muscle gain should be part of any “weight loss” plan. But for most people that still means a gradually decreasing scale weight so I stand by it as a useful metric.