How much do I really weigh?

dwulet130

I know that weight fluctuates daily with water and all that. So how do I really weigh? The high? The low? The week average?

What do you go by, and is it an honest answer or does it just make you feel better/work harder?

size102b

Weigh once a week when you get up after going to toilet same time same day naked
Go by that

Meganthedogmom

I had a thread about this not long ago if you search, "for those who weigh daily". Some people use the average over a week, some go with the weight they weigh that morning, and some go with the lowest weight of the week.

AnvilHead

How much do I really weigh?

According to most people's drivers licenses, about 40-50 pounds less than their actual/current weight.

Your weight at any moment is a snap shot of that particular moment in time. Two hours before or two hours later, it could vary by as much as several pounds. Use a trend graphing app like Happy Scale (iPhone), Libra (Android) or Trendweight (web) to see your actual weight trend.

As to your "actual" weight - who cares? If you weighed 150.3 yesterday and 151.9 at this morning's weigh-in, your weight is somewhere around 150-152. If somebody asks (and you actually want to answer), say "about 150". That's an honest answer (and so is "none of your freaking business"). As long as that range is a lower number in two weeks, three weeks, four weeks from now, you're on the right track. That's where a trend graphing app comes in handy.

williams969

I understand I'm a range, i.e. I'm 145-147 lbs currently.

cwolfman13

Body weight isn't static...so you really weigh whatever the scale says at that point in time. This is why obsessing about an arbitrary number is stupid. Your weight is a range, not a specific number.

revolucia78

AnvilHead wrote: »

How much do I really weigh?

Your weight at any moment is a snap shot of that particular moment in time. Two hours before or two hours later, it could vary by as much as several pounds. Use a trend graphing app like Happy Scale (iPhone), Libra (Android) or Trendweight (web) to see your actual weight trend.

This. I just got Happy Scale and it's extremely helpful because it averages out your weight fluctuations for you. Especially as a woman, this is very useful for the weight gain that happens during my cycle. I weigh myself everyday and used to log only the new lows but just started auto-syncing my scale with MFP and other apps so I can appreciate the fluctuations in the scale. Seeing the general trend downward even when I step on the scale and have a 2.5lb weight gain because of my cycle is helpful and allowing me to not be so scale-centric.

jemhh

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Body weight isn't static...so you really weigh whatever the scale says at that point in time. This is why obsessing about an arbitrary number is stupid. Your weight is a range, not a specific number.

This.

You weigh what the scale says during the few seconds you stand on it. There's no "real weight" or "fake weight". There's just your weight, period.

danacondah

I weigh daily at the same time, wearing the same thing (naked) Monday-Sunday. Then on Sunday I take the average for the week. When attempting weight loss over a period of weeks this is usually how I measure for the most "accurate" weight.

SonyaCele

i go with whatever weight i am on the scale at whatever time i get on it. Because thats what i weigh.

I_Will_End_You

I use the app Happy Scale and weigh every morning. I enter the weight, it gives me my average, so I just use that.

T0M_K

I have a fitbit and use Aria. Just hop on every day for trending purposes and don't sweat it unless you continue to see the number going up. It will be up and down but doing it daily gives you a nice trend line where as doing it once a week "could" result in a frustrating week and being disappointed if its a day where the water has held on or its just an up day for you. MY opinion...YMMV

emmycantbemeeko

I use my Aria daily (in the morning, after I go to the bathroom but before I get dressed) and it automatically goes to MFP, the Fitbit app, and Trendweight.

Trendweight generally gives me a trending weight a few pounds higher than my actual weight for the day (because I pretty consistently lose- once in a while on a fluid-retaining sort of day, especially around TOM, my actual weight for the day will be higher than my trend weight).

MFP shows that morning's actual weight.

Fitbit shows me my actual weight for the day and an average for the week so far.

All of these numbers are generally within about three pounds of each other.

If someone asked me my weight who had any actual business knowing, I'd probably give them that morning's weight. But they're all arguably valid. My weight is undoubtedly significantly higher an hour after I weigh myself, when I've eaten breakfast and drunk some water. It might be lower by tomorrow morning. It's likely I spend my waking hours a little heavier than my morning weight, and the night gradually losing, mostly through insensible loss of water and urine formation.

Your "real" weight is not that useful a concept- the scale number is a single snapshot of something in constant flux. I find daily weighing helps keep me aware of that, and a little more emotionally detached from the number.

biggsterjackster

My real weight is the average weekly weight that my aria scale sends to my fitbit. That's why I weigh in daily.

dragon_girl26

AnvilHead wrote: »

How much do I really weigh?

According to most people's drivers licenses, about 40-50 pounds less than their actual/current weight.

Heh, I've kept the same weight on my drivers license since I was 16 years old (I weighed 183 then). I'm sure when I was 241 lbs and people saw that weight, it was amusing. Luckily I'm less than the DL weight now...maybe all after these years it's time to change it.

scolaris

Yes, it's always a range. Always. Anorexics are a range. Morbidly obese are a range. Any mammal that's alive is a range of weights. Now my cat for instance who is a wee little mammal at about 7 lbs only fluctuates by an ounce or three. Humans, however, are bigger so the variation can be bigger too. When you get to even larger mammals, like say cows, and those cows are valued by weight, you even get scholarly articles about tracking 'shrink weight' among livestock to maximize profit like this one:
https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/jrm/article/download/7427/7039
LOLz... FYI: I guess cows can vary by as much as 11% depending on how they've been pastured, which for a 400 lb animal can be a 40+ lb variation!
When the DMV asks you your weight, however, they dont really care about your range. They just want a single number. I use a weekly average or mean for weight loss tracking, to see the trend, but once I'm in maintenance I would be inclined to switch to a 14 or 30 day mode number, the one that shows up the most statistically, as my single digit weight.

JeepHair77

size102b wrote: »

Weigh once a week when you get up after going to toilet same time same day naked
Go by that

This is what I do, only I do it twice a week. And I don't do it the day after I've had a few drinks, because I've learned from experience that the scale will probably show a few pounds of water weight that discourages me. I'm not looking for a hard, fast number, I'm looking for a general trend.

I also take measurements once a week, and I think THAT'S a lot more telling, for me, than the number on the scale.

kissedbythesunshine

I agree with downloading happy scale. Weigh yourself once a day and it averages it out for you.