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Disclaimer: I'm not a real doctor nor do I have a medical background. Nothing in this entry should be construed as medical advice, it's just my own research and experience. All care but no responsibility taken. Do not use if operating heavy machinery. Not to be used as a life saving device. If symptoms persist, see a doctor.

Beckie posted a great entry recently about people's mindsets and attitudes and how they affect her and her progress.

For me, the entry also triggered the frustration I feel when I read/hear the sorts of excuses and expectations people have for their weight loss (or lack thereof).

Take my mum. Please. [rimshot] Thank you, I'll be here all week, try the fish. It's low in calories and full of omega 3 to help make your coat shiny. And tip your waitress.

Sorry about that. I love my mum, but she is the perfect example here. While she is enormously proud of what I've achieved, she can't understand why she isn't losing any weight herself.

For example, she walks her dog for half an hour every day.

You'd think that would help, wouldn't you?

What she isn't telling you here is that the dog is a 15 year old, arthritic, half deaf and blind Maltese Terrier cross who takes half an hour to shuffle and widdle her way around the block. Sure, mum's getting a half hour walk, but the effort is scarcely enough to raise her pulse. If your heartbeat isn't in the fat-burning zone at least (220 minus your age times 70%), you're probably not exercising hard enough to lose weight.

"But I only eat tiny meals!" she cries in dispair. And it's true, my mum can't eat a lot of food at one sitting.

You'd think that would help, wouldn't you?

What you aren't seeing is the choices she's making. Yes, she will have a tiny dinner, but she'll follow it with dessert. Breakfast might be two thick slices of Schwobs fruit loaf slathered with butter. She keeps lollies (candy) and crackers in the house to snack on. She orders cafe lattes with whole milk and a little cake to eat with it. I don't begrudge her the daily glass of wine because that's good for you, but with all the other sugar and fat she's consuming? Is it any wonder she's not losing weight?

I see this sort of behaviour on blogs all the time and it frustrates me. How can you realistically expect to lose weight if you're not willing to put the effort in to exercise and eat properly?

Another way to ensure I'll surf away from your site is to have unrealistic expectations.

You know what I mean, someone who thinks they'll lose a kilo (or two pounds) a week or more until they get to goal. Here's the sad truth, folks. Your body is unhappy losing more than 1% of its own weight in a week. Any more than that and it starts to think there's a famine and starts conserving energy. Which means it starts storing and hanging onto every fat cell you possess. With a death grip.

(Note: yes, I have been posting losses of over 1% of my body weight recently. However, if you average my losses since I began in February, I'm barely averaging .6kg a week, well below 1% of my total body weight. I also have no expectation of being able to maintain this rate as I get closer to goal.)

Not only that, but even if you are well over 100kg and could realistically expect to lose 1kg a week, chances are that your metabolism is so screwed up, it's just not efficient enough to lose even 1% of your total weight every week.

If you're anything like me, you've crash dieted and starved yourself and done everything short of taking a cheese grater to your thighs to lose weight. That fucks up your metabolism big time. And the sad truth about that is it can take up to six months for your metabolism to realise that you've stopped tormenting it and that it can come out and play again.

It's bloody unfair, but it's the truth. Now, you've seen my photos. I've done really well. And I'm barely losing .6kg (1.3lb) a week on average. Some weeks I lose more. Most weeks I lose less. And my losses will slow down even further as I lose more weight. That's the hard truth. It gets tougher as you get closer to your goal.

Worse still are those who make detailed calculations of what they should be losing. They work out how much exercise it takes to burn off a pound of fat and then bemoan their fate when it doesn't work out the way they planned.

Calculations are based on a perfect system, a scientist calculating how much heat is required to burn fat in a laboratory using laboratory equipment. You know yourself that your body is NOT a perfect system. You can calculate until you're blue in the face but your body will behave as it chooses and you don't get a say in that. You can give it the exercise and nutrients it needs to perform at its peak, but you're stuck with the metabolism that you have and it might be months until your body is performing efficiently.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you have to be an angel and exercise and eat perfectly nor am I saying that any attempt to lose weight will fail, but be realistic about your behaviour and expectations.

If you do a face plant into the entire McDonald's menu one week, don't whine that you put weight on. Of course you did, now move on and work it off.

If you don't do any exercise and don't lose, well big surprise, sister. If you want the results, you've got to get off your arse and work it. If you have an injury, then find exercise that doesn't aggravate it. If it's raining, improvise something indoors. Don't give me excuses. Don't whine that you don't have time. Yes you do, you just need to find it. If you want it that badly, you find a way to do it.

If you don't lose your expected amount each week, deal with it. Your body is doing the best that it can. You can waste time and energy being upset about it if you want, but there's nothing you can do about it and you'd be better off using that energy to exercise. Better yet, stop expecting to lose a particular amount every week.

For me, if I lose half a kilo a week, I'm thrilled. If I lose more, I'm ecstatic. If I lose less, I go back and have a look at why my loss has slowed down. It's not a cue for me to whine and it's certainly not an excuse for me to eat.

I have weeks where I eat insane amounts of food. I acknowledge that I made the choice to do that and the impact it had on my weight and I move on.

I know they say to set a goal date for losing weight, but I haven't. I would like to have reached goal by my next birthday in April. Projecting an average loss of half a kilo a week, that is achievable. However, I also acknowledge that my body is an imperfect system and chances are I won't be able to sustain that rate. This is not the end of the world for me. It's about the journey and what I learn about myself and my health along the way that is more important than the goal. And I will get to goal. It might be in time for my birthday, it might not, but I will get there.

A lot of people waste an awful lot of time and energy focusing on unrealistic expectations and making excuses for not achieving them. Weight loss is simple. Less energy in, more energy out. But it's not easy. You need all that energy focused on doing the best that you can, not worrying about the impossible.

Do us all a favour. Be kind to yourself. Get real about what you are doing and what you can achieve. Then go do it.

This has been another quality rant by Dr Tree™ - Making nutritional and fitness mistakes for 20 years so you don’t have to.

Disclaimer: I'm not a real doctor nor do I have a medical background. Nothing in this entry should be construed as medical advice, it's just my own research and experience. All care but no responsibility taken. May cause nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhoea. Batteries not included. Must be installed by a licensed electrician.

I've ranted before about the evils of bathroom scales and how you can't rely solely on their results. Today we have a real life example of how this works.

Let's take these twin sisters. Identical in weight, height and body structure. They've both been losing weight by eating smaller portions of better food and doing more exercise.

This month, our two heroines have both weighed in and discovered that over four weeks, they've only lost 1.4kg (3lb) each. Now, that's still a loss, but they are disappointed that their weight loss rate has slowed down. Strangely, though, their favourite jeans are falling off their hips.

Tree1, who relies entirely on the results of her bathroom scales, wails in despair at her weight loss slowing down and can't understand why her jeans are loose when the scales tell her she's still a long way to go from goal (aka still a fat heifer). In her despair, she trips and falls face-first into a gallon of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream and has to eat her way to freedom, weeping pitifully with each bite.

Tree2, who has been taking her measurements ever since they made positive changes to their eating and exercise habits, frowns at her jeans and at the scales and pulls out her trusty tape measure. Tree2 understands that her scales don't tell her the whole story and while they are saying that she still has a long way to go to goal (aka still in fat heifer territory), other measurements might tell a different story (she's a stunning goddess of fabulous proportion). She takes the same measurements she has been every month; neck, upper arm, bust, under bust, waist, abdomen, hips, thighs and calves.

Her eyes get very big.

Her measurements are very small. She's lost a total of 18cm (7") in the past month. While her weight loss has slowed down, her body is rapidly shrinking. She realises that all her exercise has helped her to lose fat but also to put on muscle, which would cause her weight loss to slow a bit, but would show up in shrinking dress-sizes. By taking her measurements as well as weighing herself, Tree2 gets a better picture of her weight loss progress.

Tree2 is so happy, she manages to avoid the Ben & Jerry facial and treats herself to a new pair of jeans instead.

This is why it is so important to make sure you don't just rely on your scales. Seriously, the number on the scales is just a nice goal to aim for. In the grand scheme of things, it's only really important if you're a jockey or a boxer. What's more important is fitting into that favourite dress or feeling healthier or lowering your cholesterol count.

This is a dramatisation. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Except I really did lose 18cm this month. Woo!

This has been another quality rant by Dr Tree™ - Making nutritional and fitness mistakes for 20 years so you don’t have to.

Disclaimer: I'm not a real doctor nor do I have a medical background. Nothing in this entry should be construed as medical advice, it's just my own research and experience. All care but no responsibility taken. Not valid in all states. Do not exceed recommended dosage. Void if removed.

I posted recently about the way we all crave external validation. We live and die by a list of numbers; kilograms, pounds, inches, centimeters, clothing sizes, whatever.

It is not enough that we feel healthier, that we can walk without puffing, that we sleep better, that we have more energy. We need those numbers to make us feel like we’re doing the right thing.

And there is no number more insidious than that on the dial of a set of scales.

We measure because it’s a simple way to quantify our achievement. But that only makes sense in a stable environment.

The female body is NOT a stable environment.

There is stuff going on in there constantly. Things are changing on a daily, hourly basis. Processes that are necessary for us to survive, processes that can create such profound change in such a short period of time that a static measuring tool like a scale simply can't keep up. Certainly not on a daily basis, anyway.

Unfortunately, that is how a lot of us use scales.

You always hear people telling you not to weigh yourself every day. You've probably wondered why. Let Dr Tree™ explain it all.

The inimitable JuJu at The Skinny Daily wrote about this very phenomenon recently; Overnight Gains. By the way, if you’re not already reading The Skinny regularly, what's wrong with you? Go on, go read. I'll still be here when you get back.

She outlines a whole raft of reasons why your humble bathroom scales just can't cope with daily weigh-ins. Your body is doing so many crazy things on a daily basis that your poor scales can't possibly keep up. Take water retention. No, please, really, take it, for the love of all that's holy…

Not only that, but your scales are only giving you a tiny piece of the weight loss puzzle. We've already covered why your weight might not change but your body might shrink. The scales can only give you a reading of your current mass, it can't tell you WHY you weigh what you do.

So, of course, if the number on the scale isn't in your favour, you freak out. But I ate really well, I did all my exercise, I did all the right things, WHY GOD WHY?!

And then you go and eat your body weight in chocolate mud cake.

Or you get on the scales and the number makes you smile but last week you ate lard burgers with a side serving of lard and glued your butt to the sofa. So you eat an entire chocolate mud cake in celebration because the scales let you think you can get away with it.

We need to keep what the scales tell us in perspective. It's only one part of the total weight loss process and it is an uninformed part of that process. It's not the be all and end all.

Your bathroom scales are a tool. Understand that and understand their limitations.

Don't let them dictate how you feel about what you've achieved.

This has been another quality rant by Dr Tree™ - Making nutritional and fitness mistakes for 20 years so you don't have to.

Disclaimer: I'm not a real doctor nor do I have a medical background. Nothing in this entry should be construed as medical advice, it's just my own research and experience. All care but no responsibility taken. Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I was going to post a rant about all the people who believe that muscle weighs more than fat and that muscle can magically transmogrify into fat and that lifting weights makes you look unfeminine. About how I hate the propagation of ignorance and the idea that this discourages women from doing weight work to help them lose weight.

Instead, Dr Tree™ will explain all.

First of all, muscle DOES NOT weigh more than fat.

Repeat after me: muscle does not weigh more than fat.

Just to be sure I'm clear, muscle does not weigh more than fat.

Muscle is DENSER than fat. What's the difference? Pay attention, this is important, I may test you on it later. It doesn't weigh more. A kilo of muscle weighs exactly the same as a kilo of fat. But the kilo of muscle will be smaller than the kilo of fat. It will take up less space.

If you think about a kilo of lead and a kilo of feathers, they both weigh the same, but the pile of feathers will be much bigger than the lead. It's the same with muscle and fat.

Poor Kim discovered this the hard way just recently. While her weight had not changed on the scales, all of a sudden her clothes fit better. This puzzled her.

If she had gained a pound of muscle and lost a pound of fat, then this makes perfect sense. Her weight would be unchanged, but she would be physically smaller.

Another example: You get two women, both who weigh 70kg. One trains with weights, the other does little or no exercise. The weight lifter will be smaller than the other girl. She will wear a smaller clothing size. Why? Because she has a lower body fat percentage than the other girl. She has a higher muscle mass percentage. So while she weighs the same as the other girl, her muscle takes up less room than the fat on the other girl.

So, the lesson to learn here? Putting on muscle is good for you. While the needle on the scale might not go down, the size of your jeans certainly will. Besides, muscle burns fat even when you're asleep. It needs to burn fat just to maintain itself. How can something that burns fat while you sleep be bad?

Look forward to future rants in the Ask Dr Tree™ series: 'No, you're not going to turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger if you lift weights', 'If you think muscle turns into fat or vice versa, I have a lovely bridge to sell you' and 'What do you mean you don't measure yourself as well as weigh yourself, are you out of your mind?'