How often do you step on the scale?

designerdiscounts

I have weighed daily for a long time and am considering laying off for a while. I’m at my goal weight and want to work on recomp, so the scale may not reflect the changes I’m hoping to see. I got my body fat tested 3 weeks ago and plan to get that done again at the one month mark. I’ve also been taking my measurements intermittently for the last 5 years so there’s lots of data there to compare. Scale fluctuations can make or break my day, wish they didn’t but they do.

fitoverfortymom

I weigh daily, but sometimes take a break of a few weeks.

lgfrie

I weigh every day. I wish I didn't have to, in that I don't find it as motivating or helpful as I did 7 months ago when I started dieting, but I do need the daily accountability. Without the weigh ins, I start grazing and nibbling and within a day or two all hell breaks loose.

I couldn't even estimate the amount of junk food not eaten at night in order to get a decent weigh-in the next morning. Tens of thousands of calories, I think. Sometimes the coming weigh-in has been the only thing separating me from reasonable snacking behavior and an apocalyptic total food fiasco.

Hoping to someday get to a point where I'm not leaning on the scale as a crutch, but I know I'm not there yet. Weekly weigh-ins would be much preferred and make a lot more sense, I'm just not ready for that.

designerdiscounts

I've weighed daily forever but I think my mood is too closely tied to the number I see there. So, although it'll probably be really hard, I'm not weighing for a week. My food is pretty dialed in, I log everything and know what calorie number I need to be below so this hopefully won't effect that side of things.

Dootzy1

I do best when I weigh once or twice a week. That works best to keep on top of it, without getting obsessed.

MrsPinterest34

I weigh daily for the first 3 months then switch to weekly and focus more on my measurements.

nighthawk584

Sometimes every other day, sometimes once a week...but always 1st thing in the morning.

canthony3505

A couple of times a week. It fluctuates a good bit so weighing every day is pointless and just makes me obsess about it.

kierasayshi

I only weigh once a week. I refused to be married to the scale.

RoseyandReady

One per week.

fdlewenstein

Every day. I log my weight using the app Happy Scale, so I can see my weight loss trend. Now I don't freak up with the normal up and down weight fluctuation. I know others think it is not good to weigh yourself every day, but I don't think there is anything wrong with that if you have the right mindset about weight loss.

mrschwarten

I go through phases, where for weeks on end I'll weigh every day. Then I won't weigh in at all for a month or two, then I'll weigh in everyday for a little while. Back and forth! I can't say I've determined it to help or hinder my weight loss efforts, but it's almost like a pseudo-obsession for when I am in a weighing phase. Like I can't start my day at all, regardless of what the number is. And I think that's ok; I'm not freaking out about the numbers that pop up. It's almost like a little start-of-day ritual or something.

SchweddyGirl

I weigh myself every day...immediately after I wake up and use the bathroom. This is the weight I log, whether it is up or down. Sometimes I will weigh myself later in the day after a run to get an idea of how much fluid loss I suffered. I never log this weight, as I immediately drink it back (16 oz for every lb I loose).

shaf238

Once a week

cpstansburyuk

Once per week first thing in the morning. I tried weighing daily when I started on a diet plan but it just got frustrating. Now, every Sunday morning when I get up I get my weight and compare it to last week.

sijomial

Daily but it doesn't affect my mood, I expect and understand my daily fluctuations - it's normal.
Up 3lbs this morning but I'm sore from a very physical day yesterday and had a large and salty evening meal so it's not a surprise.

As it affects your mood either don't weigh daily or change your reaction to what is just data. Maybe a trending app would help with that?

But a question you need to ask yourself is if you switch to weekly weighing and that weigh-in happens to be a big upward fluctuation day will that affect your mood for a week?

KNoceros

I have been here nearly five years and have been maintaining my weight for probably 2. I still weigh daily (unless I’m not at home first thing in the morning). I do it because for me, it helps me understand the impact that things like new exercise levels, long journeys, change in foods (meals out, Chinese, more salt etc), hormonal changes etc have on my scale weight.
I am a curious sort of person and love numbers. I also have my own spreadsheet with a weight trending function on it, which show a nicely how one “blip” due to one of these (up or down) doesn’t necessarily affect the overall trend.

However, I am aware for some people this seems weird, and some people just aren’t happy with weighing daily because the little / short term fluctuations bother them. (Husband is one of these - if he weighs it’s weekly / fortnightly)
You have to find what’s right for you.

hipari

Daily, but I use a weight trend app (Happy Scale) and follow the trend weight it calculates automatically. This allows me to remove a lot of emotion from the daily fluctuations and focus more on the rational reasons of why they happen.

callsitlikeiseeit

i step on it every day but forget the number as soon as i step off. except on fridays, since that is my log day.

everybody is different as far as how good it is for their mental health to weigh frequently. if the normal daily fluctuations upset you, then weigh less frequently.

hereinmissouri

Twice a week

Safari_Gal_

I used to weigh everyday .... but as I get closer to my goal... I’ve been going with how my clothes fit.
Maybe I weigh very 2-3 weeks now.

AnnPT77

I've logged my weight every morning (when not traveling) for probably more than a decade, even before I started trying to lose weight. (I'm not obsessive; I'm a data geek, in ways other than this one, too.) Before starting to use a trending app (Libra, in my case, because Android), I put a dot on graph paper (date, weight). I have those going back years.

Once I started losing, that history was a great help. I'd already internalized what my weight fluctuations could be, how big they might be under various conditions, how long they'd take to drop off, and that sort of thing. That took a lot of the emotion out of it, for me. (It also helps that by nature I'm a very unemotional person ).

So, it was no surprise and not a source of stress when I saw fluctuations during weight loss. In fact, they usually looked smaller, because they were sitting on an overall down-slope weight trend.

That background knowledge helped me trust the process of logging: If I didn't cumulatively eat 3500 calories over maintenance, I didn't gain a pound.

I think it would be harder to start this during weight loss, especially if someone who is a little more inclined to feel stress about bodyweight, but I think that some might find that an ongoing record has that same kind of calming power in the long term . . . it just takes an effort of will to get to that point. (This is a case where a smart scale that automatically logs might be a help, for a time . . . though watching the changes while one's daily behavior is fresh in mind is where the explanatory gut-level understanding comes from, IMO.)

This is not an approach that will work for everyone: That's not what I'm saying.

It's definitely true, though, that there were weeks during weight loss when a weekly weigh-in would've told me I was gaining when I was actually losing (I think that would be stressful!), and in maintenance it's still the case that a once a month weight could be misleading in that same way. (In January, I've ranged up and down from extremes of 132.6 to 136.6 so far; In December it was 132.4 to 137.4. If I'd weighed on the 11th of each month, I would've seen 134.2 in December, and 136.2 in January: Pseudo gain, when I'm actually very slowly losing. And those aren't the only date pairs that would yield that misimpression.)

I think there's value, for anyone for whom it's possible (i.e., not everyone everyone) to work on internalizing the idea that scale weight is just a momentary snapshot of bodyweight's (plus its temporary food/water contents') relationship with gravity, not in any way a metric of one's worth as as human.

Personally, I don't believe we have a "true weight", but rather a current weight range (of fluctuations through a day, up to a small number of weeks), and a longer term weight trend (uphill slope of the current ranges if gaining, horizontal if maintaining, downhill when losing; over a period of several weeks to months and years).

tuckerrj

Now I weigh everyday. Why? Because EVERY time I regained the weight I dieted off, it was when I decided I didn't need to weigh anymore and stopped.

thenewkayla

Every 3 days😭

kq1981

I first started MFP 3 years ago so every single morning when I first started and I used happy scales to see my trend because I got discouraged with the fluctuations. Now it’s mostly once a week.

Rakesh_M

Once a week works for me

mockchoc

I don't think I'll ever buy one again. I was on it every day and couldn't stop. Now we got flooded I think I'll just go with my skirt size getting tighter or not.

mhdashler

I weigh myself once a week, on the same day, and roughly at the same time. Too much life happens in a day and I don't want to feel guilty for enjoying myself one day when I can work it off over the next few days. Weight loss (and life) is a marathon, not a sprint. Anyone can do really good (or really bad) for a day at a time. Trends take time to form just like habits. Daily victories are great, but the trend measured over time is more important to me. Weekly weigh ins are close enough together so that I can make corrections to my routine if I have gone up (even though over a week, nothing should be substantial), and the weekly weigh ins are far enough I feel to actually celebrate weight loss.

mockchoc

mhdashler wrote: »

I weigh myself once a week, on the same day, and roughly at the same time. Too much life happens in a day and I don't want to feel guilty for enjoying myself one day when I can work it off over the next few days. Weight loss (and life) is a marathon, not a sprint. Anyone can do really good (or really bad) for a day at a time. Trends take time to form just like habits. Daily victories are great, but the trend measured over time is more important to me. Weekly weigh ins are close enough together so that I can make corrections to my routine if I have gone up (even though over a week, nothing should be substantial), and the weekly weigh ins are far enough I feel to actually celebrate weight loss.

Yeah that is how it should be. Happy for you. Some can't do what they should and know is best. lol.

imabeevampire

Once a week officially, to log my weight. Might step on twice a week to see how it's going.
If I weighed daily I'd get so frustrated at not seeing the scale move, I used to do this and didn't enjoy it. Plus one week of the month my weight goes up a bit even after a calorie deficit

vivo1972

Every day. Like everyone my weight fluctuates daily, going slightly up and down.

I do it because "ooh I lost 100 grams yesterday" makes me feel good and a little boost to keep going and exercise a wee couple of minutes longer. I only used to weigh once a week and found I would feast and famine. This way I keep better portion control and am much more relaxed.