Obsessed with weighing myself..

AspenDan

So for a few weeks I've been eating better and doing cardio. I'm about 15lbs down, and I love the feeling I get when I lose a pound, or half a pound a day, weighing myself every morning. But the other day for whatever reason I'd gained a pound and some change, and got pretty down. It didn't effect how I'm doing with the approach to weight loss, but I think I need to just stop weighing myself daily...maybe go to weekly? what do yall suggest?

RuNaRoUnDaFiEld

I'm not one for weighing myself daily. I weigh twice a week but only update here weekly.

I prefer to go by how I feel and how my clothes feel.
Just stick with it and the results will continue to come
Try not to focus on the gains when they happen as that is natural, our bodies will store water at times depending on many many factors. Your doing well!

AspenDan

thanks for the advice!

hekla90

I try to weigh once a week so normal fluctuations due to fluids and such. Your weight will fluctuate

gemdood

I was weighing daily, but it is a real downer if suddenly you put on a pound or two and don't understand why. I've taken to weighing weekly, same time, same day first thing.

runrascal

Even if you are weight stable and not trying to lose your weight will fluctuate day to day by many pounds. Once a week is good, same time of day, naked if possible - but you might still hit a heavy day, don't despair.

charlieandcarol

If you weigh daily you have to accept the fluctuations. If you know you are eating within cals then you know its not real weight gain. Maybe using something like trendweight might be helpful if you aren't already? It gives you a trend line on a graph which kind of smooths out the fluctuations and shows if you are heading in the right direction or not.

DemoraFairy

I weigh everyday, it would drive me mad to weigh weekly. I weigh everyday precisely because of fluctuations - if you weigh once a week you could still weigh on a day when you're fluctuating, but because you're not weighing everyday you wouldn't know that you were 2lbs lighter the day before and the day after. You wouldn't know it was just a fluctuation. I've never really understood how weighing less often puts less emphasis on fluctuations, I can only see it making fluctuations seem worse, but it works for some people so if it would work better for you then go for it. But if you can accept that fluctuations happen then there's nothing wrong with weighing everyday.

milopacha

daily weighing was depressing me so went to weekly, which works better to avoid being too moody about it!

chilledbeast

I weigh daily, first thing. BUT, i compare my weekly averages.

tedioustrainingap

I don't weigh myself except for 6 monthly check ups. For me, getting fit and healthy is the aim, with weight loss being a happy side effect. I look at how much better I've eaten, from one week to the next. I look at how much further I can swim or walk, since the week before. There's a clear and tangible improvement this way and I have faith that a healthier weight will follow. Looking at it like this avoids all of the stress of pound counting (which I would probably find stressful!).

I don't actually own a set of scales. Never have and never will.

juleszephyr

I track my weight daily in order NOT to be freaked out by the fluctuations... It takes a while to feel confident when the numbers bounce up and down but at least you can see its not real!! I only log my weight on MFP weekly on a Friday morning. I do however always weigh first thing in the morning before I eat or drink anything...

TheGoktor

I weigh daily exactly so that I can understand how my body works, and how certain foods and exercise affect my weight. If I only weighed once a week, and the weigh day happened to be one where my weight was up because perhaps I'd had a sodium bomb the night before, I'd find it incredibly frustrating. However, because I weigh each morning, and log it on a spreadsheet and line graph, even if some days it appears that I have gained, I can look at the overall trend, and see that I am on a steady downward progression.

It also means that I can spot potential trouble spots and do something about them before they take hold.

I've lost 42lbs since the middle of January doing this, with no loss of motivation, so it definitely works well for me... but I tend to take a logical and scientific approach to everything in my life, and am pretty anally-retentive when it comes to metrics and stats - I realise that not everyone is like this!

I say do what works for you, and if it no longer works, then find something else which does. And when that no longer works, change it again. I think problems happen when we keep flogging that same old dead horse, and get frustrated when it fails to get up, so to speak. Hope you find a way which works for you, Daniel.

BTW, I'm a massive gamer too (as in I love to play games, not that I am actually massive in size - just y'know, bigger than I need to be!). Feel free to add me as a friend if you like.

Orphia

DemoraFairy wrote: »

I've never really understood how weighing less often puts less emphasis on fluctuations, I can only see it making fluctuations seem worse, but it works for some people so if it would work better for you then go for it. But if you can accept that fluctuations happen then there's nothing wrong with weighing everyday.

I think it works because of the downward trend overall. You might still get some fluctuations, sure, but the downward trend has more time to take effect.

I've been weighing in weekly for over two months and have never once been higher than the week before. This week I tried weighing myself a few times, and I was up once. I prefer weekly, as you can imagine.

NobodyPutsAmyInTheCorner

Orphia wrote: »

DemoraFairy wrote: »

I've never really understood how weighing less often puts less emphasis on fluctuations, I can only see it making fluctuations seem worse, but it works for some people so if it would work better for you then go for it. But if you can accept that fluctuations happen then there's nothing wrong with weighing everyday.

I think it works because of the downward trend overall. You might still get some fluctuations, sure, but the downward trend has more time to take effect.

I've been weighing in weekly for over two months and have never once been higher than the week before. This week I tried weighing myself a few times, and I was up once. I prefer weekly, as you can imagine.

Yep same here. I weigh every 7-10 days and have never been "up". I much prefer NOT seeing fluctuations. I know they occur but when I don't see them, I don't get upset about them lol

Orphia

NobodyPutsAmyInTheCorner wrote: »

Orphia wrote: »

DemoraFairy wrote: »

I've never really understood how weighing less often puts less emphasis on fluctuations, I can only see it making fluctuations seem worse, but it works for some people so if it would work better for you then go for it. But if you can accept that fluctuations happen then there's nothing wrong with weighing everyday.

I think it works because of the downward trend overall. You might still get some fluctuations, sure, but the downward trend has more time to take effect.

I've been weighing in weekly for over two months and have never once been higher than the week before. This week I tried weighing myself a few times, and I was up once. I prefer weekly, as you can imagine.

Yep same here. I weigh every 7-10 days and have never been "up". I much prefer NOT seeing fluctuations. I know they occur but when I don't see them, I don't get upset about them lol

Sisters!

DemoraFairy

Orphia wrote: »

DemoraFairy wrote: »

I've never really understood how weighing less often puts less emphasis on fluctuations, I can only see it making fluctuations seem worse, but it works for some people so if it would work better for you then go for it. But if you can accept that fluctuations happen then there's nothing wrong with weighing everyday.

I think it works because of the downward trend overall. You might still get some fluctuations, sure, but the downward trend has more time to take effect.

I've been weighing in weekly for over two months and have never once been higher than the week before. This week I tried weighing myself a few times, and I was up once. I prefer weekly, as you can imagine.

But you get the downward trend with weighing daily, too. And you get to see a trend starting 7 times faster :P

I can sort of see weighing weekly working if you're aiming to lose 2lbs/week, because fluctuations larger than that don't tend to happen as often. But when you're aiming for half a pound a week you don't need to fluctuate very much for that to completely disappear on a weekly weigh in. I weigh everyday hoping to see a new low, and don't get that very often - I'd be waiting even longer to see a new low if I was weighing weekly. And weighing weekly would put so much more emphasis on weight, I'd be so much more disappointed if I hadn't lost on a weekly weigh in, whereas if I expect not to lose on every daily weigh in and get excited when I have.

CurlyCockney

I weigh every day, because I find it easier to make a habit if I'm doing it daily. I use TrendWeight to see the graph and predictions.

I measure inches lost and take pictures (although I can't bear to look at them at the moment!), weekly - it's not so important at this stage to be meticulous regarding timeframes with that.

AspenDan

I'm still trying to figure out how I went from 318 to 319.6.. I know that the day prior I'd had WAY too much to drink and also too much to eat (about 3000) calories...That's the only "bad" day I've had in the two weeks I've been tracking, and only like 500 extra calories (of my 2500 TDE) shouldn't have caused me to gain that much...any ideas?

DemoraFairy

danieltsmoke wrote: »

I'm still trying to figure out how I went from 318 to 319.6.. I know that the day prior I'd had WAY too much to drink and also too much to eat (about 3000) calories...That's the only "bad" day I've had in the two weeks I've been tracking, and only like 500 extra calories (of my 2500 TDE) shouldn't have caused me to gain that much...any ideas?

1.6lbs isn't huge for a fluctuation, it's fairly normal. If you'd eaten a lot of salty foods it makes your body retain water for a bit, so that could be a culprit. And eating more food will of course mean there's probably more food in your body that you haven't got rid of yet.

To demonstrate that fluctuations are normal and nothing to worry about, here's the first few weeks of my weight loss, and the graph over several months:

AspenDan

Wow that is super cool! Is that part of MFP or something else? I'd really like to check it!

SusanKing1981

DemoraFairy wrote: »

I weigh everyday, it would drive me mad to weigh weekly. I weigh everyday precisely because of fluctuations - if you weigh once a week you could still weigh on a day when you're fluctuating, but because you're not weighing everyday you wouldn't know that you were 2lbs lighter the day before and the day after. You wouldn't know it was just a fluctuation. I've never really understood how weighing less often puts less emphasis on fluctuations, I can only see it making fluctuations seem worse, but it works for some people so if it would work better for you then go for it. But if you can accept that fluctuations happen then there's nothing wrong with weighing everyday.

This is the reason I weigh daily.

DemoraFairy

danieltsmoke wrote: »

Wow that is super cool! Is that part of MFP or something else? I'd really like to check it!

It's a spreadsheet on Google Drive lol. You could also use Excel, or a website/app designed for this (like TrendWeight mentioned a couple of times earlier) to do it. I just record my weight there everyday and plot a graph.

amanda_the_mom

DemoraFairy wrote: »

I weigh everyday, it would drive me mad to weigh weekly. I weigh everyday precisely because of fluctuations - if you weigh once a week you could still weigh on a day when you're fluctuating, but because you're not weighing everyday you wouldn't know that you were 2lbs lighter the day before and the day after. You wouldn't know it was just a fluctuation. I've never really understood how weighing less often puts less emphasis on fluctuations, I can only see it making fluctuations seem worse, but it works for some people so if it would work better for you then go for it. But if you can accept that fluctuations happen then there's nothing wrong with weighing everyday.

This is exactly how I feel too! I use the Libra app to track my weight and you can set the trendline to be calculated for multiple days. I believe the default is a week, but I use 3 days. I like weighing evey day because if something is going wrong, you start to see it sooner. So if you have one day that's up, but the next day is down again then you know it was just a fluctuation. But if day after day you keep creeping up for a few days or a week, you know there's something wrong with what you're doing and you can adjust it. But if you were weighing weekly and saw one weight up, you wouldn't know if you've actually started going up or if it happens to be one day that your bloated or haven't pooped lol

7lenny7

chilledbeast wrote: »

I weigh daily, first thing. BUT, i compare my weekly averages.

I think this is the best way to go if logging daily bothers you when you have a small gain. Your weight will fluctuate from day to day and there will be days it will go up. You can't focus on the day to day change, but on the overall trend. If you only weigh once per week you may happen to weigh yourself on an "up" day and needlessly be concerned you're not losing weight.

I do weight daily, and I log it every day, but I understand that I needn't get concerned about any jump in weight, which for me has been as much as 2 pounds. If you're following your calorie budget correctly, your weight has to go down in the long run. Here's my weight report for the last 3 months. Plenty of spikes in there from days that I've gained, but you can see the overall trend is great.

ElJefeChief

Yeah I weigh daily. It's actually pretty fun to see the day-to-day fluctuations smooth out into a nice negative trend over time.

spatulamom

I weigh daily - it's comforting to me to see the fluctuations because I'm more in tune with my body that way. Sometimes I weigh more than once because we also have a scale in the bathroom at work and I like to compare the two - it doesn't throw me off at all, they're always fairly close to one another.

kshama2001

I weigh daily and try to not let the fluctuations get to me. I just log on MFP when I've lost a full pound. I'm thinking of logging in Excel to reinforce the idea that fluctuations are normal.

BigGuy47

Trendweight and Libra Weight manager (app) can help with understanding fluctuations. They map scale weight along with the trend weight to give you visual representation of the fluctuations. I wish the weight tracking on MFP included similar features.

The other alternative is to simply weigh yourself once a week and accept the fact that fluctuations happen.