The Inflammation Spectrum – by Dr. Will Cole

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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Cole’s other book “Gut Feelings”, and now he’s back, this time to tackle inflammation.

The focus here is on understanding what things trigger inflammation in your body—personally yours, not someone else’s—by something close to the usual elimination process yes, but he offers a way of sliding into it gently instead of simply quitting all the things and gradually adding everything back in.

The next step he takes the reader through is eating not just to avoid triggering inflammation, but to actively combat it. From there, it should be possible for the reader to build an anti-inflammatory cookbook, that’s not only one’s own personal repertoire of cooking, but also specifically tailored to one’s own personal responses to different ingredients.

The style of this book is very pop-science, helpful, walking-the-reader-by-the-hand through the processes involved. Dr. Cole wants to make everything as easy as possible.

Bottom line: if your diet could use an anti-inflammatory revamp, this is a top-tier guidebook for doing just that.

Click here to check out The Inflammation Spectrum, find your food triggers and reset your system!

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    Indulge guilt-free with Clarke’s “stealthy healthy” recipes—delicious, easy, and adaptable to all seasons, a must-have for health-conscious gourmets.

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  • The Ultimate Booster

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    Winning The Biological Arms Race

    The human immune system (and indeed, other immune systems, but we are all humans here, after all) is in a constant state of war with pathogens, and that war is a constant biological arms race:

    • We improve our defenses and destroy the attackers; the 1% of pathogens that survived now “know” how to counter that trick.
    • The pathogens wreak havoc in our systems; the n% of us that survive now have immune systems that “know” how to counter that trick.

    Vaccines are a mighty tool in our favor here, because they’re the technology that stops our n% from also being a very low number.

    With vaccines, we can effectively pass on established defenses onto the population at large, as this cute video explains very well and very simply in 57 seconds:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    The problem with vaccines

    The problem is that this accelerates the arms race. It’s like a chess game where we are able to respond to every move quickly (which is good for us), and/but this means passing the move over to our opponent sooner.

    That problem’s hard to avoid, because the alternative has always been “let people die in much larger numbers”.

    Traditional vs mRNA vaccines

    A quick refresher before we continue to the big news of the day:

    • Traditional vaccines use a disabled version of a pathogen to trigger an immune response that will teach the body to recognize the pathogen ready for when the full version shows up
    • mRNA vaccines use a custom-made bit of genetic information to tell the body to make its own harmless fake pathogen and then respond to the harmless fake pathogen it made.

    Note: this happens independently of the host’s DNA, so no, it does not change your DNA

    See also: The Truth About Vaccines

    Here’s a more detailed explainer (with a helpful diagram) using the COVID mRNA vaccine as an example:

    Genome.gov | How does an mRNA vaccine work?

    However, this still leaves us “chasing strains”, because as the pathogen (in this case, a virus) adapts, the vaccine has to be updated too, hence all the boosters.

    This is a lot like a security update for your computer’s antivirus software. They’re annoying, but they do an important job.

    No more “chasing strains”

    The press conference soundbite on this sums it up well:

    ❝Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.❞

    ~ Jules Bernstein

    Read in full: Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

    You may be wondering: what makes this one effective against any strain?

    ❝What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad.

    It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.

    Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this.❞

    ~ Dr. Rong Hai

    Importantly, this means it can be applied not just to one disease, let alone just one strain of COVID. Rather, it can be used for a wide variety of viruses that have similar viral functions—COVID / SARS in general, including influenza, and even viruses such as dengue.

    How it does this: the above article explains in more detail, but in few words: it targets tiny strings of the genome that are present in all strains of the virus.

    Illustrative example: if you wanted to block 10almonds (please don’t), you could block our email address.

    But if we were malicious (we’re not) we could be sneaky and change it, so you’d have to block the new one, and the cycle repeats.

    But if you were block all emails containing the tiny string of characters “10almonds”, changing our email address would no longer penetrate your defenses.

    Now imagine also blocking strings such as “One-Minute Book Review” and “Today’s almonds have been activated by” and other strings we use in every email.

    Now multiply this by thousands of strings (because genomes are much larger than our little newsletter), and you see its effectiveness!

    Great! How can I get this?

    It’s still in the testing stages for now; this is “breaking news” science, after all.

    The study itself

    …is paywalled for now, sadly, but if you happen to have institutional access, here it is:

    Live-attenuated virus vaccine defective in RNAi suppression induces rapid protection in neonatal and adult mice lacking mature B and T cells

    Take care!

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  • Quick Healthy Recipe Ideas

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    “It was superb !! Just loved that healthy recipe !!! I would love to see one of those every day, if possible !! Keep up the fabulous work !!! ”

    We’re glad you enjoyed! We can’t promise a recipe every day, but here’s one just for you:

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  • What Grief Does To Your Body (And How To Manage It)

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    What Grief Does To The Body (And How To Manage It)

    In life, we will almost all lose loved ones and suffer bereavement. For most people, this starts with grandparents, eventually moves to parents, and then people our own generation; partners, siblings, close friends. And of course, sometimes and perhaps most devastatingly, we can lose people younger than ourselves.

    For something that almost everyone suffers, there is often very little in the way of preparation given beforehand, and afterwards, a condolences card is nice but can’t do a lot for our mental health.

    And with mental health, our physical health can go too, if we very understandably neglect it at such a time.

    So, how to survive devastating loss, and come out the other side, hopefully thriving? It seems like a tall order indeed.

    First, the foundations:

    You’re probably familiar with the stages of grief. In their most commonly-presented form, they are:

    1. Denial
    2. Anger
    3. Bargaining
    4. Depression
    5. Acceptance

    You’ve probably also heard/read that we won’t always go through them in order, and also that grief is deeply personal and proceeds on its own timescale.

    It is generally considered healthy to go through them.

    What do they look like?

    Naturally this can vary a lot from person to person, but examples in the case of bereavement could be:

    1. Denial: “This surely has not really happened; I’ll carry on as though it hasn’t”
    2. Anger: “Why didn’t I do xyz differently while I had the chance?!”
    3. Bargaining: “I will do such-and-such in their honor, and this will be a way of expressing the love I wish I could give them in a way they could receive”
    4. Depression: “What is the point of me without them? The sooner I join them, the better.”
    5. Acceptance: “I was so lucky that we had the time together that we did, and enriched each other’s lives while we could”

    We can speedrun these or we can get stuck on one for years. We can bounce back and forth. We can think we’re at acceptance, and then a previous stage will hit us like a tonne of bricks.

    What if we don’t?

    Assuming that our lost loved one was indeed a loved one (as opposed to someone we are merely societally expected to mourn), then failing to process that grief will tend to have a big impact on our life—and health. These health problems can include:

    As you can see, three out of five of those can result in death. The other two aren’t great either. So why isn’t this taken more seriously as a matter of health?

    Death is, ironically, considered something we “just have to live with”.

    But how?

    Coping strategies

    You’ll note that most of the stages of grief are not enjoyable per se. For this reason, it’s common to try to avoid them—hence denial usually being first.

    But, that is like not getting a lump checked out because you don’t want a cancer diagnosis. The emotional reasoning is understandable, but it’s ultimately self-destructive.

    First, have a plan. If a death is foreseen, you can even work out this plan together.

    But even if that time has now passed, it’s “better late than never” to make a plan for looking after yourself, e.g:

    • How you will try to get enough sleep (tricky, but sincerely try)
    • How you will remember to eat (and ideally, healthily)
    • How you will still get exercise (a walk in the park is fine; see some greenery and get some sunlight)
    • How you will avoid self-destructive urges (from indirect, e.g. drinking, to direct, e.g. suicidality)
    • How you will keep up with the other things important in your life (work, friends, family)
    • How you will actively work to process your grief (e.g. journaling, or perhaps grief counselling)

    Some previous articles of ours that may help:

    If it works, it works

    If we are all unique, then any relationship between any two people is uniqueness squared. Little wonder, then, that our grief may be unique too. And it can be complicated further:

    • Sometimes we had a complicated relationship with someone
    • Sometimes the circumstances of their death were complicated

    There is, for that matter, such a thing as “complicated grief”:

    Read more: Complicated grief and prolonged grief disorder (Medical News Today)

    We also previously reviewed a book on “ambiguous loss”, exploring grieving when we cannot grieve in the normal way because someone is gone and/but/maybe not gone.

    For example, if someone is in a long-term coma from which they may never recover, or if they are missing-presumed-dead. Those kinds of situations are complicated too.

    Unusual circumstances may call for unusual coping strategies, so how can we discern what is healthy and what isn’t?

    The litmus test is: is it enabling you to continue going about your life in a way that allows you to fulfil your internal personal aspirations and external social responsibilities? If so, it’s probably healthy.

    Look after yourself. And if you can, tell your loved ones you love them today.

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  • Hitting the beach? Here are some dangers to watch out for – plus 10 essentials for your first aid kit

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Summer is here and for many that means going to the beach. You grab your swimmers, beach towel and sunscreen then maybe check the weather forecast. Did you think to grab a first aid kit?

    The vast majority of trips to the beach will be uneventful. However, if trouble strikes, being prepared can make a huge difference to you, a loved one or a stranger.

    So, what exactly should you be prepared for?

    FTiare/Shutterstock

    Knowing the dangers

    The first step in being prepared for the beach is to learn about where you are going and associated levels of risk.

    In Broome, you are more likely to be bitten by a dog at the beach than stung by an Irukandji jellyfish.

    In Byron Bay, you are more likely to come across a brown snake than a shark.

    In the summer of 2023–24, Surf Life Saving Australia reported more than 14 million Australian adults visited beaches. Surf lifesavers, lifeguards and lifesaving services performed 49,331 first aid treatments across 117 local government areas around Australia. Surveys of beach goers found perceptions of common beach hazards include rips, tropical stingers, sun exposure, crocodiles, sharks, rocky platforms and waves.

    Sun and heat exposure are likely the most common beach hazard. The Cancer Council has reported that almost 1.5 million Australians surveyed during summer had experienced sunburn during the previous week. Without adequate fluid intake, heat stroke can also occur.

    Lacerations and abrasions are a further common hazard. While surfboards, rocks, shells and litter might seem more dangerous, the humble beach umbrella has been implicated in thousands of injuries.

    Sprains and fractures are also associated with beach activities. A 2022 study linked data from hospital, ambulance and Surf Life Saving cases on the Sunshine Coast over six years and found 79 of 574 (13.8%) cervical spine injuries occurred at the beach. Surfing, smaller wave heights and shallow water diving were the main risks.

    Rips and rough waves present a higher risk at areas of unpatrolled beach, including away from surf lifesaving flags. Out of 150 coastal drowning deaths around Australia in 2023–24, nearly half were during summer. Of those deaths:

    • 56% occurred at the beach
    • 31% were rip-related
    • 86% were male, and
    • 100% occurred away from patrolled areas.

    People who had lived in Australia for less than two years were more worried about the dangers, but also more likely to be caught in a rip.

    Pathway to Australian beach cove with blue water
    Safety Beach on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. Still bring your first aid essentials though. Julia Kuleshova/Shutterstock

    Knowing your DR ABCs

    So, beach accidents can vary by type, severity and impact. How you respond will depend on your level of first aid knowledge, ability and what’s in your first aid kit.

    A first aid training company survey of just over 1,000 Australians indicated 80% of people agree cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is the most important skill to learn, but nearly half reported feeling intimidated by the prospect.

    CPR training covers an established checklist for emergency situations. Using the acronym “DR ABC” means checking for:

    • Danger
    • Response
    • Airway
    • Breathing
    • Circulation

    A complete first aid course will provide a range of skills to build confidence and be accredited by the national regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority.

    What to bring – 10 first aid essentials

    Whether you buy a first aid kit or put together you own, it should include ten essential items in a watertight, sealable container:

    1. Band-Aids for small cuts and abrasions
    2. sterile gauze pads
    3. bandages (one small one for children, one medium crepe to hold on a dressing or support strains or sprains, and one large compression bandage for a limb)
    4. large fabric for sling
    5. a tourniquet bandage or belt to restrict blood flow
    6. non-latex disposable gloves
    7. scissors and tweezers
    8. medical tape
    9. thermal or foil blanket
    10. CPR shield or breathing mask.

    Before you leave for the beach, check the expiry dates of any sunscreen, solutions or potions you choose to add.

    If you’re further from help

    If you are travelling to a remote or unpatrolled beach, your kit should also contain:

    • sterile saline solution to flush wounds or rinse eyes
    • hydrogel or sunburn gel
    • an instant cool pack
    • paracetamol and antihistamine medication
    • insect repellent.

    Make sure you carry any “as-required” medications, such as a Ventolin puffer for asthma or an EpiPen for severe allergy.

    Vinegar is no longer recommended for most jellyfish stings, including Blue Bottles. Hot water is advised instead.

    In remote areas, also look out for Emergency Response Beacons. Located in high-risk spots, these allow bystanders to instantly activate the surf emergency response system.

    If you have your mobile phone or a smart watch with GPS function, make sure it is charged and switched on and that you know how to use it to make emergency calls.

    First aid kits suitable for the beach range in price from $35 to over $120. Buy these from certified first aid organisations such as Surf Lifesaving Australia, Australian Red Cross, St John Ambulance or Royal Life Saving. Kits that come with a waterproof sealable bag are recommended.

    Be prepared this summer for your trip to the beach and pack your first aid kit. Take care and have fun in the sun.

    Andrew Woods, Lecturer, Nursing, Faculty of Health, Southern Cross University and Willa Maguire, Associate Lecturer in Nursing, Southern Cross University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Why Everyone You Don’t Like Is A Narcissist

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve written before about how psychiatry tends to name disorders after how they affect other people, rather than how they affect the bearer, and this is most exemplified when it comes to personality disorders. For example:

    “You have a deep insecurity about never being good enough, and you constantly mess up in your attempt to overcompensate? You may have Evil Bastard Disorder!”

    “You have a crippling fear of abandonment and that you are fundamentally unloveable, so you do all you can to try to keep people close? You must have Manipulative Bitch Disorder!”

    See also: Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women

    Antisocial Diagnoses

    These days, it is easy to find on YouTube countless videos of how to spot a narcissist, with a list of key traits that all mysteriously describe exactly the exes of everyone in the comments.

    And these days it is mostly “narcissist”, because “psychopath” and “sociopath” have fallen out of popular favor a bit:

    • perhaps for coming across as overly sensationalized, and thus lacking credibility
    • perhaps because “Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)” exists in the DSM-5 (the US’s latest “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”), while psychopathy and sociopathy are not mentioned as existing.

    You may be wondering: what do “psychopathy” and “sociopathy” mean?

    And the answer is: they mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean. Their definitions and differences/similarities have been vigorously debated by clinicians and lay enthusiasts alike for long enough that the scientific world has pretty much given up on them and moved on.

    Stigma vs pathology

    Because of the popular media (and social media) representation of NPD, it is easy to armchair diagnose one’s relative/ex/neighbor/in-law/boss/etc as being a narcissist, because the focus is on “narcissists do these bad things that are mean to people”.

    If the focus were instead on “narcissists have cripplingly low self-esteem, and are desperate to not show weakness in a world they have learned is harsh and predatory”, then there may not be so many armchair diagnoses—or at the very least, the labels may be attached with a little more compassion, the same way we might with other mental health issues such as depression.

    Not that those with depression get an easy time of it socially either—society’s response is generally some manner of “aren’t you better yet, stop being lazy”—but at the very least, depressed people are not typically viewed with hatred.

    A quick aside: if you or someone you know is struggling with depression, here are some things that actually help:

    The Mental Health First-Aid You’ll Hopefully Never Need

    The disorder is not the problem

    Maybe your relative, ex, neighbor, etc really is clinically diagnosable as a narcissist. There are still two important things to bear in mind:

    • After centuries of diagnosing people with mental health maladies that we now know don’t exist per se (madness, hysteria, etc), and in recent decades countless revisions to the DSM and similar tomes, thank goodness we now have the final and perfect set of definitions that surely won’t be re-written in the next few years or so ← this is irony; it will absolutely be re-written numerous times yet because of course it’s still not a magically perfect descriptor of the broad spectrum of human nature
    • The disorder is not the problem; the way they treat (or have treated) you is the problem.

    For example, let’s take a key thing generally attributed to narcissists: a lack of empathy

    Now, empathy can be divided into:

    • affective empathy: the ability to feel what other people are feeling
    • cognitive empathy: the ability to intellectually understand what other people are feeling (akin to sympathy, which is the same but with the requisite of having experienced the thing in question oneself)

    A narcissist (as well as various other people without NPD) will typically have negligible affective empathy, and their cognitive empathy may be a little sluggish too.

    Sluggish = it may take them a beat longer than most people, to realize what an external signifier of emotions means, or correctly guess how something will be felt by others. This can result in gravely misspeaking (or inappropriately emoting), after failing to adequately quickly “read the room” in terms of what would be a socially appropriate response. To save face, they may then either deny/minimize the thing they just said/did, or double-down on it and go on [what for them feels like] the counterattack.

    As to why this shutting off of empathy happens: they have learned that the world is painful, and that people are sources of pain, and so—to avoid further pain—have closed themselves off to that, often at a very early age. This will also apply to themselves; narcissists typically have negligible self-empathy too, which is why they will commonly make self-destructive decisions, even while trying to put themselves first.

    Important note on how this impacts other people: the “Golden Rule” of “treat others as you would wish to be treated” becomes intangible, as they have no more knowledge of their own emotional needs than they do of anyone else’s, so cannot make that comparison.

    Consider: if instead of being blind to empathy, they were colorblind… You would probably not berate them for buying green apples when you asked for red. They were simply incapable of seeing that, and consequently made a mistake. So it is when it’s a part of the brain that’s not working normally.

    So… Since the behavior does adversely affect other people, what can be done about it? Even if “hate them for it and call for their eradication from the face of the Earth” is not a reasonable (or compassionate) option, what is?

    Take the bull by the horns

    Above all, and despite all appearances, a narcissist’s deepest desire is simply to be accepted as good enough. If you throw them a life-ring in that regard, they will generally take it.

    So, communicate (gently, because a perceived attack will trigger defensiveness instead, and possibly a counterattack, neither of which are useful to anyone) what behavior is causing a problem and why, and ask them to do an alternative thing instead.

    And, this is important, the alternative thing has to be something they are capable of doing. Not merely something that you feel they should be capable of doing, but that they are actually capable of doing.

    • So not: “be a bit more sensitive!” because that is like asking the colorblind person to “be a bit more observant about colors”; they are simply not capable of it and it is folly to expect it of them, because no matter how hard they try, they can’t.
    • But rather: “it upsets me when you joke about xyz; I know that probably doesn’t make sense to you and that’s ok, it doesn’t have to. I am asking, however, if you will please simply refrain from joking about xyz. Would you do that for me?”

    Presented with such, it’s much more likely that the narcissist will drop their previous attempt to be good enough (by joking, because everyone loves someone with a sense of humor, right?) for a new, different attempt to be good enough (by showing “behold, look, I am a good person and doing the thing you asked, of which I am capable”).

    That’s just one example, but the same methodology can be applied to most things.

    For tricks pertaining to how to communicate such things without causing undue resistance, see:

    Seriously Useful Communication Skills

    Take care!

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  • How often should you really weigh yourself?

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    Few topics are more debated in health than the value of the humble bathroom scale. Some experts advocate daily self-weigh-ins to promote accountability for weight management, particularly when we’re following a diet and exercise program to lose weight.

    Others suggest ditching self-weigh-ins altogether, arguing they can trigger negative psychological responses and unhealthy behaviours when we don’t like, or understand, the number we see on the scale.

    Many, like me, recommend using scales to weigh yourself weekly, even when we’re not trying to lose weight. Here’s why.

    Diva Plavalaguna/Pexels

    1. Weighing weekly helps you manage your weight

    Research confirms regular self-weighing is an effective weight loss and management strategy, primarily because it helps increase awareness of our current weight and any changes.

    A systematic review of 12 studies found participants who weighed themselves weekly or daily over several months lost 1–3 BMI (body mass index) units more and regained less weight than participants who didn’t weight themselves frequently. The weight-loss benefit was evident with weekly weighing; there was no added benefit with daily weighing.

    Two people cross the road
    Weighing regularly means we know when our weight changes. Andres Ayrton/Pexels

    Self-weigh-ins are an essential tool for weight management as we age. Adults tend to gain weight progressively through middle age. While the average weight gain is typically between 0.5–1kg per year, this modest accumulation of weight can lead to obesity over time. Weekly weighing and keeping track of the results helps avoid unnecessary weight gain.

    Tracking our weight can also help identify medical issues early. Dramatic changes in weight can be an early sign of some conditions, including problems with our thyroid, digestion and diabetes.

    2. Weekly weighing accounts for normal fluctuations

    Our body weight can fluctuate within a single day and across the days of the week. Studies show body weight fluctuates by 0.35% within the week and it’s typically higher after the weekend.

    Daily and day-to-day body weight fluctuations have several causes, many linked to our body’s water content. The more common causes include:

    The type of food we’ve consumed

    When we’ve eaten a dinner higher in carbohydrates, we’ll weigh more the next day. This change is a result of our bodies temporarily carrying more water. We retain 3–4 grams of water per gram of carbohydrate consumed to store the energy we take from carbs.

    Our water content also increases when we consume foods higher in salt. Our bodies try to maintain a balance of sodium and water. When the concentration of salt in our bloodstream increases, a mechanism is triggered to restore balance by retaining water to dilute the excess salt.

    Bowl of pasta
    The morning after a big pasta dinner, we’ll carry more water weight. Dana Tentis/Pexels

    Our food intake

    Whether it’s 30 grams of nuts or 65 grams of lean meat, everything we eat and drink has weight, which increases our body weight temporarily while we digest and metabolise what we’ve consumed.

    Our weight also tends to be lower first thing in the morning after our food intake has been restricted overnight and higher in the evening after our daily intake of food and drinks.

    Exercise

    If we weigh ourselves at the gym after a workout, there’s a good chance we’ll weigh less due to sweat-induced fluid loss. The amount of water lost varies depending on things like our workout intensity and duration, the temperature and humidity, along with our sweat rate and hydration level. On average, we lose 1 litre of sweat during an hour of moderate-intensity exercise.

    Hormonal changes

    Fluctuations in hormones within your menstrual cycle can also affect fluid balance. Women may experience fluid retention and temporarily gain 0.5–2kg of weight at this time. Specifically, the luteal phase, which represents the second half of a woman’s cycle, results in a shift of fluid from your blood plasma to your cells, and bloating.

    Glass of water
    Most of our weight fluctuations are water-related. Engin Akyurt/Unsplash

    Bowel movements

    Going to the bathroom can lead to small but immediate weight loss as waste is eliminated from the body. While the amount lost will vary, we generally eliminate around 100 grams of weight through our daily bowel movements.

    All of these fluctuations are normal, and they’re not indicative of significant changes in our body fat or muscle mass. However, seeing these fluctuations can lead to unnecessary stress and a fixation with our weight.

    3. Weekly weighing avoids scale obsession and weight-loss sabotage

    Weighing too frequently can create an obsession with the number on the scales and do more harm than good.

    Often, our reaction when we see this number not moving in the direction we want or expect is to further restrict our food intake or embark on fad dieting. Along with not being enjoyable or sustainable, fad diets also ultimately increase our weight gain rather than reversing it.

    This was confirmed in a long-term study comparing intentional weight loss among more than 4,000 twins. The researchers found the likelihood of becoming overweight by the age of 25 was significantly greater for a twin who dieted to lose 5kg or more. This suggests frequent dieting makes us more susceptible to weight gain and prone to future weight gain.

    So what should you do?

    Weighing ourselves weekly gives a more accurate measure of our weight trends over time.

    Aim to weigh yourself on the same day, at the same time and in the same environment each week – for example, first thing every Friday morning when you’re getting ready to take a shower, after you’ve gone to the bathroom, but before you’ve drunk or eaten anything.

    Man weighs himself
    Weigh yourself at the same time on the same day of the week. Alexanderstock23/Shutterstock

    Use the best quality scales you can afford. Change the batteries regularly and check their accuracy by using a “known” weight – for example, a 10kg weight plate. Place the “known” weight on the scale and check the measurement aligns with the “known” weight.

    Remember, the number on the scale is just one part of health and weight management. Focusing solely on it can overshadow other indicators, such as how your clothes fit. It’s also essential to pay equal attention to how we’re feeling, physically and emotionally.

    Stop weighing yourself – at any time interval – if it’s triggering anxiety or stress, and get in touch with a health-care professional to discuss this.

    At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.

    Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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