Weigh ins

Gary25181320

What's the benefits of weighing in every morning rather than once a week or once a month ?

LyndaBSS

It's really a personal choice.

I weigh daily. My scale syncs to my health mate app which sends the info to mfp. Weighing daily keeps me engaged in the process from the minute I wake up and allows me to see my weight loss trending.

I also don't freak out about any fluctuations so it's easy for me.

seska422

Weighing daily lets me see that one weigh-in is just a data point so I don't stress over it. It's the trend that matters.

Having daily weights also lets me see patterns.

apullum

If you weigh once a week or month, you have no idea where that weight fits within your normal weight fluctuation. You might happen to weigh on a day when you’re holding onto a lot of extra water weight, or you might happen to weigh when you’re a bit dehydrated. If you weigh daily and use a weight trend app, it helps “smooth out” these fluctuations.

hixa30

Gary25181320 wrote: »

What's the benefits of weighing in every morning rather than once a week or once a month ?

If you aren't measuring intake, you have almost immediate feedback that you have stopped losing.

If you gain one day, you don't have to think that maybe it's caused by this or that, you know the exact cause.

You know that you've been at your current weight for 3 weeks, it's time to start losing again.

lynn_glenmont

hixa30 wrote: »

Gary25181320 wrote: »

What's the benefits of weighing in every morning rather than once a week or once a month ?

If you aren't measuring intake, you have almost immediate feedback that you have stopped losing.

If you gain one day, you don't have to think that maybe it's caused by this or that, you know the exact cause.

You know that you've been at your current weight for 3 weeks, it's time to start losing again.

Daily weigh-ins reflect daily fluctuations in water retention and food in the digestive tract. They don't in themselves provide the kind of clear and immediate insight you suggest into whether you've "stopped losing" or the "exact cause" of those fluctuations.

OP, for some people having lots of data points and using some kind of trend-graphing app helps them see beyond the fluctuations caused by water retention and the amount of food in their digestive system. If those kinds of fluctuations don't bother you, you may not find any added benefit to daily weighing over weekly or monthly weighing.

On the other hand, if you're a data geek and hunger for more data points, there's no good reason not to gather them. In some areas I'm a data geek (I have six years of CICO data, and I really value that), but daily body-scale data points don't do anything for me.

Or maybe daily weigh-ins would help you stay focused on your goals, and that would generally be a good thing. The food-logging does that for me, but weigh-ins might do it for you.

Personally, I weigh weekly and I don't use a trend-graphing app. I just average the four or five readings from the month to get an average monthly weight, and jot it down. I can look back over the monthly averages and see the trends just fine. I log my calories and exercise and I trust the process. If I see a blip that isn't explained by net calories over the past week, I chalk it up to water weight and/or food weight, and continue on. No panic. No need to go reassure myself by looking at an app. It pretty much always smooths out over the next week or two.

Example: two weigh-ins ago, my net calories for the week indicated I should expect about a half pound gain after several weeks of losses, but the scale showed a gain of 2 lbs, which didn't panic me. I've found that water-weight effects are magnified when the slope of the weight change shifts from negative to positive (or vice versa), or even when there's a substantial change in the slope of the curve from week to week. My net calories for the following week suggested I should expect between another quarter and half-pound gain, but the scale actually showed a loss of a pound. Over the two weeks, the net result on the scale was spot-on for what my logging would suggest (within the scale's limits, as it only reads in half-pound increments).

emmamcgarity

I weigh daily but only track losses. For me stepping on the scale is part of habit building. I don’t worry much about fluctuations. I do watch for the weight starting to creep up higher than the expected fluctuations so that I can make adjustments. Weighing daily helps motivate me to stay focused on keeping my calories in check.

AnnPT77

Weighing every morning helped me to understand, with time and experience, what kinds of things tended to cause meaningless water weight fluctuations in my body, and about how long it would take for them to reverse.

That knowledge was a stress-reducer, for me. One sees people here sometimes freaking out because the scale went up a pound. After a period of reassuring experience, I'm now quite confident that if I didn't eat 3500 calories above maintenance, that pound is a meaningless fluctuation, and not worth worrying about.

There have been times when I looked at my day-to-day weight records, and saw that had I only weighed once a week, I would've thought I gained or held steady, when in fact I was losing. (One Friday or whatever happened to be a low-ish part of my current weight range, and the next Friday happened to be a high-ish part of my then current weight range.)

Overall, it just has a usefully calming effect, for me. YMMV.

lgfrie

I weigh in every morning. My wife never weighs herself - just once, the day she started. So there's the two extremes. We are both logging all calories and exercise into MFP. It's just a question of your personal preference and what motivates (or demotivates) you. I like the accountability of a daily weigh in. The desire to have a good weigh-in the next morning keeps me from eating anything in the evening or at night.

Also, like @AnnPT77 above, daily weigh-ins have helped me understand the rhythms and ebbs and flows of weight loss, which of course is not linear and can seem perplexing or demoralizing if you don't know the patterns. For me, having the ever-growing data set of my daily weight over time is helpful and stress-reducing.

NovusDies

I don't use trending software instead I use a homemade system to map my weight on a curve. It allows me to see progress even when the scale goes north instead of south. It also allows me to see how much weight loss I am masking at any particular moment (~.5 lbs currently).

Even though the scale will not show linear results fat loss is really pretty linear and it happens right around 3500 calories per pound for me. Slight rebounds (like from a vacation) are far harder to track because you cannot wrap them up in the 3500 figure. I recently logged enough to gain 2 pounds and I only gained a half pound. It threw off my curve.

lgfrie

NovusDies wrote: »

I don't use trending software instead I use a homemade system to map my weight on a curve. It allows me to see progress even when the scale goes north instead of south. It also allows me to see how much weight loss I am masking at any particular moment (~.5 lbs currently).

I'm stumped as to the purpose of trending software. Been using Libra for months, and I guess I can kinda see its purpose, but it doesn't tell me anything a chart of my weight, which MFP provides, doesn't.

I know, simply by dividing my total weight lost by the total number of days, so much useful information. My average daily fat loss over a substantial period of time is - 0.3057 lbs/day, which is a calorie deficit of 1070 and is also 2.14 lbs/week. So that's the trend right there, and will remain so as long as I keep doing the same levels of CICO.

I don't get what the trend apps purport to show that's more useful than that. A chart of weight loss with no trend line shows you whether things have perked up or slowed down from water retention/loss, you don't need a trend line to know that.

sefajane1

lgfrie wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

I don't use trending software instead I use a homemade system to map my weight on a curve. It allows me to see progress even when the scale goes north instead of south. It also allows me to see how much weight loss I am masking at any particular moment (~.5 lbs currently).

I'm stumped as to the purpose of trending software. Been using Libra for months, and I guess I can kinda see its purpose, but it doesn't tell me anything a chart of my weight, which MFP provides, doesn't.

I know, simply by dividing my total weight lost by the total number of days, so much useful information. My average daily fat loss over a substantial period of time is - 0.3057 lbs/day, which is a calorie deficit of 1070 and is also 2.14 lbs/week. So that's the trend right there, and will remain so as long as I keep doing the same levels of CICO.

I don't get what the trend apps purport to show that's more useful than that. A chart of weight loss with no trend line shows you whether things have perked up or slowed down from water retention/loss, you don't need a trend line to know that.

I agree. I weigh in daily in MFP and Libra (Libra is just habit now).
I don't see any actual advantage to using Libra, in fact, sometimes it could demoralise me by looking at the trend reading. It's purely habit.
MFP's progress page shows me the same weights just without the added stress of a (usually) negative trend.

Hannahwalksfar

It allows me insight into how my body works and how it fluctuates during weight loss. It also keeps me accountable and motivated. A few grams off and I get motivated to keep going, a few grams on and I get motivated even more to keep going. I tried weekly and I found I was caring less and becoming less disciplined

NovusDies

lgfrie wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

I don't use trending software instead I use a homemade system to map my weight on a curve. It allows me to see progress even when the scale goes north instead of south. It also allows me to see how much weight loss I am masking at any particular moment (~.5 lbs currently).

I'm stumped as to the purpose of trending software. Been using Libra for months, and I guess I can kinda see its purpose, but it doesn't tell me anything a chart of my weight, which MFP provides, doesn't.

I know, simply by dividing my total weight lost by the total number of days, so much useful information. My average daily fat loss over a substantial period of time is - 0.3057 lbs/day, which is a calorie deficit of 1070 and is also 2.14 lbs/week. So that's the trend right there, and will remain so as long as I keep doing the same levels of CICO.

I don't get what the trend apps purport to show that's more useful than that. A chart of weight loss with no trend line shows you whether things have perked up or slowed down from water retention/loss, you don't need a trend line to know that.

Loads of people swear by them. I get why they help but I tried one and I realized I liked my system better. The trending app told me I was gaining weight when I entered a month's worth in it. Considering I once had a really bad relationship with the scale I don't need to see that on the screen. I knew better at the time but it still bothered me.