Weight loss confusion???

[MissVerinder]

I have weighed myself on the super duper scales at the chemist. I have lost 3lbs in 9 days (yay) but only about 1/2lb of it was fat??? The rest looks to have come from muscle mass, which means I am actually carrying more fat without the 3lb than with it?

Please can someone who knows what they are talking about help? I don't want to lose muscle mass, I'm sure my metabolism is crap anyway. Altogether I've lost about 24lb, so is this a plateau coming up?

I have been losing weight through Paul McKenna, eating better things anyway and doing loads of walking. And cutting out diet coke.

The other 2.5 pounds will be water.

U need to weigh at the same time of day in order to get meaningful results from these scales. So that might be one explanation.

re: muscle loss, sadly this is normal when loosing weight, I have tanita scales and I measured every day (!) - from my experimenting the only way I could avoid muscle loss was to eat (a decent amount of) protein at each meal AND do weight bearing exercise each day.

The other 2.5lbs might be water, but equally could be some muscle loss.

[http://www.fitwatch.com/weight-loss/3500-calories-to-lose-a-pound-is-this-formula-all-wrong-237.html]

The readout gave me my "hydration" level, and it was the same this time as last time- it's in a percentage. The percentage of muscle mass has gone down, and the percentage of fat mass up; although I suppose it's all relative.

Serves me right for trying to be smart and using the flippin' scales in the first place.

forever I think I am going to try and up my protein intake, but as an austerity veggie, what's best? I might be able to get to a gym once a week, but that's not really enough I guess. I'll have to figure something out at home.

The link I send shows you can end up loosing muscle rather than fat which is quite depressing. I found in the early part of my diet (before I upped the protein and did the weights) the loss was 80% fat. Later in the diet when I changed the way I ate and did the weights I was gaining muscle and loosing weight and fat.

Weights - Jillian michaels 30 day shred. I bought 2kg and 4kg and pushed myself with the weights! can now do most of exercises with the 4kg weights.

Protein - thats hard, I eat loads of fish and poultry. Veggie sources - soya beans, quorn, eggs, natural yoghurt and cottage cheese. Eat pulses instead of others carbs (like grains) as they do contain some protein. Same with nuts and seeds.

I'm scared of the shred! I'll look into it. Thanks, forever.

How do the scales 'know' whats fat or not ?

How can they possibly tell ?

Electrical pulses around body! And yes surprisingly accurate as I had body fat tested in gym with callipers several times and was very similar to scales.

MissVerinder, as a fellow veggie, QUORN for the protein!!
I eat tons of it, it's a bit of a staple! I don't get the 'ready-meal' quorn stuff, but rather the mince / chicken pieces / meat balls etc., and cook with them from scratch.
Also, Linda McCartney's veggie sausages are fab