Benefits to weighing self everyday?

nmedina10

I am planning to weigh myself everyday and logging it in a weight loss tracker. What are the benefits of doing this? Is it normal to gain a pound one day and lose it the next? I just wanna prepare myself so I don't get depressed over gaining weight overnight

Ninkyou

Yes it's normal. The benefit is you can see patterns to gains/losses and also go by an overall trend. Data=knowledge. The more data, the more knowledge.

Stella3838

I just posted this in another thread:

Love the Happy Scale app. I weigh in almost every day and it's great for mapping trends. When I look at 30 days, it's definitely heading downward. My weight fluctuates for all kinds of reasons, but seeing that graph trend down tells me I'm on the right path. Weighing every day doesn't work for some people, but for me it's perfect. You can't worry if you go up one day and down the next. Micromanaging will drive most people crazy. But maybe mapping your trends will help you see how your overall program is working for you.

Need2Exerc1se

Yes, quite normal to gain or lose a pound (or more) in one day. The benefits to weighing everyday would be personal. If you like to do it then I suppose it would be a benefit. For some the fluctuations make them crazy.

If you are going to get depressed if you gain overnight it's probably not a good idea. The one benefit it does have is that when you do gain that pound (or two) overnight you know it's not fat, whereas if you weigh less often and happen to gain that pound (or two) the night before your weigh-in you don't have the lower weight from yesterday to comfort you.

mazdauk

I find no benefit at all. Now I'm on maintenance(ish) I tend to measure once a week and weigh once a fortnight, just to make sure nothing is creeping up.

kommodevaran

You don't gain or lose a pound from one day to the next. Your weight can fluctuate several pounds from day to day. Weight gain is slow, gradual, creeping, logical, and indefinite. Fluctuations are sudden, often large, often inexplicable, but always limited. You don't have a weigth, you have a weight range.

I love weighing myself every day and I regret that I didn't start earlier. Some days I "feel fat", but the scales don't reflect that; it's only in my head. Before, "feeling fat" would make me either try to cut down (too much) on food, until I couldn't do it anymore, or the opposite, stop caring, and just eat more because everything was going to hell anyway.

Now I know that I can't gain weight overnight, and weighing every day helps me 1) focus on making good decisions every day, 2) adjust intake before it's a problem, and 3) not worry, because my weight is never going to be a problem, as long as I keep weighing and keep caring.

animatorswearbras

I weigh every day, as long as you're prepared for normal water weight fluctuations which can be several pounds up and down especially when starting new exercise routines or drastically changing your diet, and just see the average month by month, sure. If you think you may not be able to cope with the completely normal fluctuations and rationalise them over a month long time-line or get a bit obsessive maybe stick to once a week.

Weight loss is rarely a ruler-straight line downwards as we are complicated bags of meat, fluid and semi digested matter.

courtneyfabulous

Benefits will be noticing that fluctuations are normal- 1, 2, or even 3 pounds difference from day to day is not unusual depending on if you are watching your sodium intake, how regular your digestion is, and your workout schedule. If you use with a graph it might be good so you can see the overal trend is that you are losing, despite daily fluctuations.

The downside could be that you however might get too hung up on your number day to day- that's what happened to me when I wheighed daily. I started getting scale obsessed and would even do dumb stuff like sleep in longer and avoid drinking water at night or in the morning until I had weighed just so the number would be lower. It also would really affect my mood for the rest of the day if I hadn't lost or if I'd gained. So I had to switch to weekly weigh ins on Saturdays... and sometimes do a mid week check on Wednesday just because it's hard to go a whole week sometimes... weight still fluctuates but at least I'm not thinking about it every single day.

annacole94

I like the trendline. I can see I'm making progress, even if I am up a pound today from yesterday.

ritzvin

I like to see the trends, so I do weigh everyday. But I also see the plot and whether it is fitting the desired trend immediately after weighing when I enter it. Fluctuations of up to several pounds are normal. You have to ignore the weight loss/gain between single weigh-ins.



Example:





(For me, it takes a 2 week buffer to smooth out any climbs).
In the table, you can see just how much your 1 week, 2 week, 4 week difference can vary from day to day, so I do like to see trends. (All weight data above are first thing in the morning after bathroom break).

sijomial

What are the benefits of doing this?

One of the benefits is you get to understand that...

Is it normal to gain a pound one day and lose it the next?

Is indeed normal for you, expected and understood. So it becomes a non-issue and means you don't....

get depressed over gaining weight overnight

My normal fluctuations are more like 3lbs a day.

darrensurrey

nmedina10 wrote: »

What are the benefits of doing this?

The benefits of weighing everyday or even every 6 hours are so that you can see how much your weight fluctuates over time even with a solid weight loss plan in place.

It will be interesting...










... or an utter soul destroyer.

Only you will know which.

MaybeLed

I weigh every day I'm home (I don't use other scales). I weigh in the same conditions (or as close to) as I can manage.

I miss happy scale, ideal if you have iOS, there is libra for android, trendweight.com on a web browser.

It does help, in the graph below you can see I 'put on' 1lb a day for 4 days. now if I'd only weighed in on day 4 I may have thought I'd made no progress in the last month. I've been weighing like this for 9 months and I've spotted the trends alond with what I've eaten. Day 10 was the day after my favourite Chinese meal, but I expeced that.

mellowncalm

i love what MAZDAUK said she measures everyday. i like that better than weighing. weighing gets me depressed everyday too NMEDINA10. as i get closer to my long term goal weight i will weigh everyday but for now. measuring and weight once a week. i am setting my weight goal for only 10 lbs at a time. once i conquer the 10 pounds then i will set another 10 lbs. if you find 10 difficult set your goal for 5 pounds. you will have more goals and be happier. good luck.
i am setting up for a 40 day (LENT - march 1, 2017) weight loss.

slowbubblecar

I can't see any benefits aside from knowing how much your weight can fluctuate in a day. I do once a week myself but do it as much as you want if you like.

deannalfisher

I do it daily, because it helps me look at other correlations - how much salt did I take in the day prior; exercise level; how many steps; how was my sleep; is it that time of the month (or leading up to it) - it helps to provide (for me) a more holistic view of what can affect my weight

Tacklewasher

I weigh daily and I can go up or down by 2 lbs. Even 2.5 some days looking back. I'm using Trendweight and also putting it into Excel, but I just started Trendweight and may stop with Excel. I find it good to know the trend more than that day, but if I was weighing weekly I may catch a bad day and be more demotivated. I also like seeing how much I have lost month-to-date and what not.

I always weigh first thing in the morning before I eat or drink anything but after going to the bathroom.

Tacklewasher

lorrpb

In addition to the many good comments above, I'll add that it teaches you to treat the number on the scale as a data point rather than a statement of your self worth. It helps you learn how YOUR body Works, which is great, because you need to live with it for the rest of your life. I use Happy Scale for dailys, then log each new low in MFP. That might happen twice a week or once a month.

xsmilexforxmex

I weigh every day and at first it was scary but It has helped me to stay on track and evaluate my food choices/time of the month/recent workouts. I use the Libra Weight tracker app, it gives much of the same benefits as previous ones mentioned. When I have pizza or sushi, I can easily gain 5lbs overnight... but it usually falls off in a day or 2. It also helps me to start seeing the trends.

everher

Everything everyone else said and personally, for me, it helps to keep me accountable. If my weigh in is a week away or days away I find I will make excuses for overeating like "oh, well I'm not going to weigh myself until x day and I will cut back by then" and yada yada you can imagine.

I also tend to eat a good bit of takeout and fast food so if I start to see my weight slowly creeping up through the week I know I need to cut back.

smelliefeet

I never weighed myself daily before, but I heard people raving about it. It kept them accountable. Now, I have been weighing myself for a week, every single day. I understand the rationale for it. As a woman, I see my weight go up by 5 lbs in a week just with hormone fluctuations, so while I record my weight every day it's only a general reference point, and once I have 30 days of reference points I can actually see my REAL weight, how it is fluctuating by what I eat and what exercise I do, and make changes for a more successful weight loss plan.

geebusuk

As above - I use the libra app.
Weighing every day it takes out inconsistencies in both your weight and the scales with the smoothing, giving a better idea of what's going on so you can more quickly adjust - as above, once a week you could easily miss that there's issues with your CICO with inconsistencies.

emmarrgh

I weigh every day on my Wii Fit, and only log new lows into MFP. I agree that you see daily numbers as more of a 'data point', which removes the stress/mind-games from it. For me, anyway. For some it could cause over-restriction to try to force the scale down-down-down every day, but I know that's impossible.

It also helps me get 'back on track' after a day of eating too much. Last time, I was up 0.9lbs the morning after a buffet, and then up 0.2 the next day too, and instead of thinking I was the worst fattest eat-beast ever, it made me realise it's because all that extra food had 'backed me up'. So once my system was back to normal, I was back to my normal weight, and then within a couple more days, I was down another 0.5lbs. I knew I hadn't just packed on 1.1lbs of fat literally in a 12-hour period from a 1000 calorie surplus (it takes 3500 calories to put on 1lb), so I knew there had to be other factors.

MelanieCN77

I weigh daily and I think it keeps me sane. Seeing the bumpy line over and over but going downwards means the stress of seeing what the scale actually says on any given day is gone. I can even predict to the day, if I have been eating my normal good way, if I have maintained or gained or lost. I have a pattern of like three days small downwards movements, hold, maybe up a half or pound, then back to the couple days downwards. If I only weighed once a week I might miss this nuance. Also it's easy to eat well for a day, mentally looking at a big stretch without feedback is harder for me.

kq1981

I weigh daily at the moment to give myself an idea of my trending weight lose. Then in a month (I'm only new here) I'll have a better understanding of how to adjust calorie intake to keep at a slow progressive loss.

TimothyFish

Weighing yourself every day is one way to see if your colonic cleanse is working.

wanzik

I step on a scale every day at the gym but my official weigh-in is at home on Saturday mornings when I first get up. I have a nice Omron Body Composition scale. I use that for my full body comp and those are the results I post here on MFP. I don't see any benefit to doing the full comp daily. What's important is the long term trend and if one does it all right, that trend will be downward... or whatever direction your goals dictate.

BCullari

nmedina10 wrote: »

I am planning to weigh myself everyday and logging it in a weight loss tracker. What are the benefits of doing this? Is it normal to gain a pound one day and lose it the next? I just wanna prepare myself so I don't get depressed over gaining weight overnight

I weigh myself before bed and right when I awaken.
The benefit?
I always know where I am based on my training and food intake. Knowing the truth is always beneficial, but you just need to have the courage to face that truth with reasonable expectations.
Good Luck!

starryphoenix

I weigh a lot because it helps me know what I'm doing right and wrong. You can learn a lot from the scale, not just weight.

dammitjanet0161

As most people above have commented, if you approach it in the right way (ie once a day only, not hopping on and off several times a day) it takes the emotion out of it and you get used to the fluctuations caused by water/sodium etc. It also takes away the whole "wah, I've been good all week so why haven't I lost" slimming club mentality of weighing on a set day each week.