How often to weigh in maintenance

MessyApron

TL;DR - I used to have scale anxiety, but I’ve found a few tools and habits that help me weigh myself every day without freaking me out.

I used to have strong scale anxiety; that number on the scale would dictate how I felt about myself each day, and in the worst case scenario I would sometimes see a higher number and think, “*kitten* it, I’m ordering pizza.” I used to refuse to weigh myself during my menses because I knew the water weight would throw it off, and even though I knew it was retained water and not fat I would still feel terrible about myself when I saw the higher number, and that mentality led me to avoid using the scale at all if I thought it might be higher than I wanted it to be.

That being said, every single time I stopped weighing myself the weight would creep back up, unnoticed my me until my clothes started getting uncomfortable and I had to steel myself to step on the scale again and see how much damage had been done. Thus, I began to associate the scale with having to start a diet and all the unpleasant feelings that come along with that. So yeah, me and the scale were not friends. Or maybe the scale was like some mean-girl frenemy who made snippy comments about my weight.

Then one day I listened to a podcast (https://www.halfsizeme.com/hsm295/) that laid the groundwork to change my mindset about the scale. I highly recommend you listen to it, when you have the time.
Next I invested in a smart scale that reads body fat percentage, water weight, etc, and puts them all in a graph so that I can see the trend for the week, month, year, or since day 1 of using it. Then I set the scale’s app to sync with all my other health and fitness apps so that I always have the most up-to-date information on all of them without having to manually update my weight, especially when I want to focus on the long term trend instead of daily numbers.

With that in place, I started weighing myself first thing in the morning after using the bathroom but before eating or drinking anything. It worked for me for a long time, but I met a snag during plateaus. It was disheartening to see my weight staying about the same after two or three weeks when I knew I was on top of all my habits during that time, and it triggered the same avoidance of the scale that contributed to weight regain in the first place.
Then I found another app to help me view weight trends, and I’ve seen it mentioned by other people in this thread; Happy Scale. I first heard about it in another episode of that podcast I posted above, and I’ve found it to be very helpful in helping me see that my weight *is* actually trending down, even if it’s a slow descent, but Happy Scale was described as a useful tool for maintenance and helping to determine ones maintenance calories.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that. If anyone made it through this wall of text, then I hope there was something in it that you found helpful.

MessyApron

ThinnerLiz wrote: »

I may be weird, but I made weighing in a part of my daily routine. Every morning, (naked!), before I eat or drink anything, I step on the scale and log my weight.

Not weird at all! I think a lot of people do it this way.