about scales :O

muffinsandcakes
muffinsandcakes Posts: 333 Member
in Food and Nutrition
how to know if your weight scale isn't telling the truth ?
and how to tell if the one in your ant home is accurate and that in your granny's is not ! :|
and should you take of your shoes,socks, and outer clothes when you weigh yourself ?

Replies

  • SlimMe37
    SlimMe37 Posts: 133 Member
    Use the same scale in the same place in the morning, after the loo. I do this, as I know I weigh differently around the house. I weigh before I get dressed (in my pjs). If using a battery operated scale then make sure you change the battery every few months or when it tells you its low. I have a battery and mechanical scale. I know my old mechanical scale spring broke a few years ago, but hubby looked at it not me. I don't know what that looks like lol. At the moment I have both just to double check weight changes if I'm unsure.
  • muffinsandcakes
    muffinsandcakes Posts: 333 Member
    should i weigh myself every single day ?
    and so much thanks for answering FibroGurl o:)
  • steff274
    steff274 Posts: 227 Member
    My scale said the same as the doctors scale so I guess mine is pretty accurate..
  • lolly715
    lolly715 Posts: 106
    edited October 2014
    If you always use the same scale, in the same place, at the same time, in the same amount of clothing... it's not lying. If you're not doing that and just weighing whenever/wherever, it's also not lying but may not be accurate as your weight fluctuates during the day even without factoring in different clothes, amount of food and drink consumed beforehand, and so on. Also different scales can give different readings depending how they're calibrated, whether they're positioned on a hard or soft surface, etc.
  • MsHarryWinston
    MsHarryWinston Posts: 1,027 Member
    For the past 5 days I've weighed myself 3 times a day every day in order to understand my fluctuations. Every single day when I get home from work my in the morning my weight is the same as my start weight from when I got my scale last week. After I've slept for a few hours and i wake up to go to the bathroom I check again and I've lost a couple of pounds.
    When I wake up properly after full sleep to get ready to go to work I weigh myself for real and I've lost weight every single day this week. Even though it's 6pm that is my "weigh myself first thing in the morning" time. Because I'm on night shifts. The first two times I weigh myself every day are very similar day to day. Probably a lot of water weight and retention from working out. BUT every single day that I do the third check my weight is lighter every. Single. Day. From the day before.


    Watching it like this I've learned that I've actually lost 4.5lbs in 5 days.
    If I hadn't run this experiment and only weighed myself when I got home from work I would think that I hadn't lost a single pound this week!! (And I know that it's not all water weight because I've actually been working on my weight loss for a month and a half I just didn't have a scale, and in the past 7 days I've lost 2 inches off my stomach alone).

    So to put it into perspective for the 9-5ers. If I weighed myself at 6pm when I got home from work it would say that I hadn't lost any weight this week. But if I weighed myself at 7am when I woke up it would show weight loss every day.

    I just happen to be in the position where I can actually SEE it happening on the scale throughout the day the way you would if you were to track it throughout the night. But people are too busy sleeping in the middle of the night to perform weight loss science experiments, lol.

    This is why it's so important to A) find your optimal weighing time of day
    And
    B) weigh yourself at that exact same time every day etc etc

    It's like a controlled science experiment. One seemingly unimportant change and you won't know how well you are really doing!
  • Sweetvirgo63
    Sweetvirgo63 Posts: 119 Member
    I only use the scale in my bedroom, first thing in the morning wearing only panties. If it shows a 15-lb overnight gain, I know it's time to change the battery :p Sometimes, I'll weigh at night just before bedtime to have an idea of the fluctuation during the day but I don't let the number disturb me.
  • 100andOnward
    100andOnward Posts: 145 Member
    This!! I have found I actually get the most accurate reading on Monday evenings, around 7:00.... and I weigh myself 5 different times. If I get the same weight 3 or more times, I go with that. If I get close, I average out (e.g., xx7.2, xx7.8, xx7.1 would be recorded as xx7.5.

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