Scale display concern

Jerry9254

I have an old digital weight watcher scale with relatively new batteries that does the most unusual thing. I weigh myself first thing in the morning. If my day permits I may weigh myself in the middle of the day. And right before I go to bed I weigh myself for the last time. Often all the weight measurements will be exactly the same. Regardless of what I may have eaten the weight is the same. I don't fast or otherwise eat miniscule amounts of food so it's not to impact my weight. I just find it unusual that if I weigh 210.8 in the morning that I will weigh exactly 210.8 at lunch and 210.8 at night. My wife will get on the scale and it will reflect her weight so it's not a matter of the display being stuck. The next day whether my weight is down or up the scale will do the same thing. Has anyone ever seen anything like this?

RelCanonical

Some digital scales have an algorithm built in where unless the change in weight is significant enough (like a half pound or so, not sure of exact amount) it will display the same weight. When your wife weighs herself, it is “resetting” because her weight is probably different enough from yours, and it’s showing her actual weight. My scale does this, I usually do something like pick up my needy cat to reset it so the next reading gives me my actual weight.

Unicorn_Bacon

I usually stand on mine with a 2l bottle of pop lol then get off and get my real weight

Jruzer

I have proof that my scale does this! It took me a while to demonstrate it, but it's very clear.

For a long time (years) I stepped on the scale daily and recorded whatever weight came on it. I started to suspect that the scale was playing this kind of trick, so I made up a histogram showing how much weight change there was from day to day. The I changed my habit - I took two measurements, the first while holding several extra pounds like a bottle of moisturizer and a full coffee cup, and the second being my true weight. I again took a histogram of daily changes. The result was unambiguous - when I used the first reading, 0 weight change was observed much more commonly than would be expected. That's the red trace below.

I don't like that the scale manufacturer feels the need to play these kinds of psychological tricks. I sometimes wonder if some of the people who complain that "The scale's not budging!" may be seeing the same thing.