How often should you weigh yourself

ptronis

I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes after Christmas and totally changed my eating habits. I am on medication and am about 50lbs overweight. I get on the scaled everyday and have been very diligent about diet. As of yesterday I had lost 11lbs. Yesterday I ate what I was supposed to eat, nothing different and I gained 2lbs. How can that be? I don't understand how I could have gained 2lbs in 1day, especially when I ate correctly and didn't have any extra salt!!!

Help, I wanna cry!!

staceysmomm

Your weight will fluctuate all during the day. I doubt you gained 2lbs in 1 day. Try weighing yourself once a week.

idontcarroll

Your weight will fluctuate all during the day. I doubt you gained 2lbs in 1 day. Try weighing yourself once a week.

This! Weigh in once a week. Keep up the good work!
Hope you can get off the medication and be free of diabetes.

CyberEd312

Your weight will fluctuate all during the day. I doubt you gained 2lbs in 1 day. Try weighing yourself once a week.

This..... My weight will go up or down as much as 5 lbs. over the course of the day...... pick a day and make that day your weigh in once a week first thing in the morning......... Best of Luck

jonnythan

I weigh every day and use the site Trendweight.com to identify patterns over time. The smoothing techniques make daily variations meaningless.

growtinymuscles

The scale is a motivation killer! I recommend that you weight yourself the (same day and time...preferably the morning) no more than once a week! Instead, use your clothes and mirror as a guide. It is also important to know that it will take you around a month before you notice any changes...

ItsCasey

I weigh every day and use the site Trendweight.com to identify patterns over time. The smoothing techniques make daily variations meaningless.

This.

Weighing once a week isn't really any different than weighing every day and trying to read meaning into a snapshot. You could be retaining more water on this week's weigh-in day than you were last week (for any number of reasons), so the scale may say you have gained weight when you really haven't.

If you're new to regularly weighing yourself and you're becoming too emotionally attached to what the scale says, then just put it aside for a while, and focus your energy on improving your diet and exercise habits. The scale will take care of itself if you have those two things under control.

But if you're going to weigh every day, learn how to use the information to evaluate your progress OVER TIME, not just from one day to the next.

cwolfman13

Natural body weight fluctuations. You have water retention/release, more/less waste in your system, food and beverage in/out, varying degrees of glycogen stores, etc. Nobody weighs exactly XXX lbs...body weight isn't static. Therefore, your losses aren't linear.

Your weight...whether losing, maintaining, or gaining is a general trend over time, not day to day. I've been maintaining for about 8 months...my weight generally fluctuates between 179 lbs and 185 Lbs with my 8 month average being 183 Lbs. Tuesday I was 185.6 Lbs...yesterday I was 183.5 lbs...this morning I was 179.9 Lbs...for whatever reason, I always have a whoosh of water weight on Thursdays..it's pretty much been that way since I started doing all of this. Thursdays are usually my light days...Tuesdays are my heavy days. It's almost like clockwork.

I weigh pretty much daily because I like the data points and I can better analyze my trends...if natural weight fluctuations freak you out, it's probably not a good idea to weigh daily. As you progress, your weight loss will slow (because you have less water and glycogen to lose) and you will see more of these types of fluctuations show up as some of your fat loss will be masked by water weight.

Smashley1947

Take your body measurements and use them as a indicator,

I check every 2 weeks. Losing the weight and getting healthier isn't going to happen overnight.

Keep up good habits

supergirl6

Honestly? I started out weighing myself every day. Not really obsessively, but because I wanted to understand how my weight DOES fluctuate and change. I wanted to get a handle on understanding my body weight and how it's different in the morning, at night, from one day to the next, from one week to the next. I liked knowing how different foods effected my short term fluctuations. This gave me more feeling of control and of freedom - I knew that eating something salty would give me a short term gain that would disappear in a day or two. I discovered that a really great workout session would mean a one or two day gain that would diseappear on its own. Understanding how things effected me allowed me to let go of my fear and guilt over eating food.

But it can also become obsessive if you don't use it in a positive way. So I think really, it depends on the person. Weigh yourself when you want to weigh yourself. There's no one way that's correct. Don't let it define you because it's only one piece of data to be used in the whole with how you feel, how your clothes feel, how strong you feel, how you look in before and after pictures, how your measurements look. You look at ALL the data together, not just one piece.

FitFunTina

Fluctuations are normal and to be expected. That being said, as long as you are consistently doing the right things, the scale will go down despite the fluctuations (just not always on our time table).

I do weigh myself every day. But I also am real enough to know when the fluctuations are my fault (poor logging habits), or other unknown matters such as water retention.

GBrady43068

Your weight can fluctuate based on:

A) What you are wearing (unless you are always weighing the same clothing everytime)....shoes on vs. shoes off
Time of day (You weigh more if there's a pound of food in your guts being digested than you do in the time between your last meal and eating)
C) How much water you've drunk
D) How much sodium you've had (Are you holding onto water?)
E) Likely many other factors I've forgotten...

Don't weigh everyday. Pick ONE day a week and weigh then and try and make it the same time of day. As someone else has said, one bad day isn't going to crush you. I went roughly 1500 calories over my targets on Thanksgiving and still lost weight that week. Also, keep in mind that the number on the scale isn't the ONLY indicator of becoming healthier and more fit:

Are you less winded when you climb several flights of stairs?
Are you clothes less tight?
Is your neck shrinking?
Have you lost a chin?
Can you do more pushups/situps/crunches/plank longer than when you started?

Good luck...

NatalieG525

I weigh myself every Monday morning, as soon as I wake up (well, after my morning wee! TMI, I know haha).

When I tried to lose weight before I was completely obsessed with the scales, which is why I will never go back to weighing myself everyday. Once a week works for me right now

FreshKrisKreash

Every week should help to keep you on track but not drive you insane watching the numbers go up an down. Also make sure you do it at the same time under the same circumstances each week. Like maybe you could do it every Friday after you wake up after you've went to the bathroom.

MelissaVoci

I quit weighing daily because I am easily discouraged.... now I weigh every Friday and also measure So, like this week, I am only down a pound, but am down almost 5 inches in overall measurements from last week (2 of those from my waist) It made my morning

MrsMRo220

I weigh every Friday morning. I do it on Fridays because my husband and kids like to just eat all weekend long. So seeing my progress helps me stay on track!

nicoleisback

I personally weigh every morning, first thing right after I use the bathroom. I like weighing every day because through doing this and analysing my diary from the day before when I go up, I have learned how different foods affect my body and weight. For example, it was through doing this that I discovered diet drinks make me put on weight without fail, and that I can actually have more carbs than I thought (which was a weight off my mind) before it affects the scales.

Mostly it depends on you, what type of person you are and what you are going to do with the data. If you are only weighing to see if you are making progress, then once a week or two (or even once a month) is fine. If you are able to not obsess about the number going up or down a bit each day and want to know how different things affect your body, then go daily.

roblock81

I personally check my weight every morning straight out of bed before I eat or drink and of course after I use the bathroom I have days that stay the same or go up a pound or so but do not focus on those days since it just happens from time to time. As others have stated many factors can make the number on the scale fluctuate. The number I use as a judge of how well my diet & excise is working is my weekly loss/gain. If I only lost 1 lb the entire week I know I might need to change it up at the gym or double check that my calories are where they need to be.

Daily weight checking is just a part of my routine. It keeps me on track with my diet knowing the scale in the morning will reflect it if I slipped up the night before with a high cal snack. When I did weekly I would tell myself it is okay since I have 3 more days before weigh in to burn it off!

Also when you do get down to your goal weight daily weight check is perfect to catch yourself falling back into old habits before they get out of control. If I see a constant gain 3-4 days in a row I know I need to do something different!

Some things to keep in mind. Drink LOTS of water during the day!! Water Retention is probably the biggest reason for weight fluctuations if you are sticking to a diet. I know it seems odd but your body will actually retain more water if you drink less of it. Drink lots of water and you retain less. Of course your visits to the bathroom increase also

Also I have a confession. Anyone else weigh themselves before then after using the bathroom to see how your weight changes?

roblock81

Another fun way to track your progress without the scale. Take a daily photo for the next 90 days and watch the transformation!

rdpapag

If you don't weigh yourself every hour you are doing it wrong.

xNouvelleVie

Like everyone else is saying your weight will fluctuate throughout the day. It can fluctuate as much as four pounds I've heard. I've seen it for myself. I do weigh in everyday, but I don't really let the numbers bother me too much. If the numbers bother you too much then once a week is best. I think weighing in the morning after you first go the bathroom is best. I am always at my lowest weight then. If I weigh before bed it's always higher. So mornings is best at least for me. But I think it is for pretty much everyone else too. I think it's best to weigh at the same time, and most likely in the morning.

DemoraFairy

Personally I've never understood the argument of "if you find yourself focusing too much on the scale when weighing daily, try weighing once a week". Weighing once a week, for me, would put MUCH more emphasis on it. Weighing daily just means it's a normal, routine, boring every day thing, like showering or brushing your teeth. Weighing once a week suddenly makes it an event that you look forward to or dread. Whenever I can't weigh every day, with each passing day I get more anxious as to what's changed, because it will be such a bigger change than it would be day to day. I took my scales with me on holiday because I knew that without them I'd spend the whole week dreading the day I got back and had to weigh, but with them there it was a constant reassurance. Even if I gain over the week, I'd rather a series of small disappointments than one huge disappointment at the end!

And, of course, there's the argument of if you happen to weigh on the one day you're fluctuating, you won't know that you've actually lost weight and you'll beat yourself up for not losing that week. But with weighing every day you know EXACTLY what's going on. Weighing every day also means that you KNOW that if you fluctuate one day, it'll be gone within another couple of days, because it happens all the time. And if you log it you can get a nice, pretty graph to look at and feel good about yourself (obviously you can do that weighing every week, too... but you get results 7x faster weighing every day :P).

Do whatever works for you, of course. Just adding another opinion in.

roblock81

I agree 100% I made it a routine. My 1 rebuttal to the weekly weigh in. What if that happens to be the day your weight fluctuates up 3 lbs!! Checking daily you would know that it was just a day your body retained some water or something. But if it was the only number you have for the entire 7 days then you would just beat yourself up for gaining weight that week!

_MG_

I weigh everyday but don't obsess over the numbers. I just see how it trends over time.

The daily weighing is a good reminder to me to stay on top of my food and the amount I move.

KANGOOJUMPS

never, i do not even own a scale.,

shelisa619

I only really just started to diet. But I'm trying to weigh myself once a week on a Friday. It's difficult because I get urges to weigh myself during the week. But well worth it when I weigh myself and see how much I've lost

captmiddy

I weigh myself every day, flip out then move on :happy:. I just don't let it define my day. Like others have said, I am looking for a trend not a daily change. If I see a 3 or 4 day trend of being up a little I might do an extra 5k steps that day to give myself a kick. If I am trending down a little faster than expected I might have an extra snack that day.

The important thing isn't to take what the scale tells you and think OH NO I have blown my plan, instead look at how you are doing over multiple weeks of measurement, if you are trending in the wrong direction over multiple weeks or stabilizing then maybe you need to make an adjustment.

bwogilvie

I weigh every day and use the site Trendweight.com to identify patterns over time. The smoothing techniques make daily variations meaningless.

^ I do the same (though I use a different site, The Hacker's Diet Online).

For an explanation of how this is useful, read the chapters on "The Rubber Bag" and "Signal and Noise" in John Walker, The Hacker's Diet, available online at: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/

davert123

I weigh myself daily and my weight also goes up and down. It can go up as much as 3lb in a day and it can drop the same. sometimes it just holds the same value for a week or more. I think this is just the way bodies work. At the end of the day when we diet we burn fat but our bodies contain loads of other stuff as well which fluctuate as we live.

juiletflt

I like to weigh everyday and graph it to see trends. I don't get caught up in daily changes. I prefer this method over once a week because what if the day I happen to weigh on that week happens to be one of the day that is a spike?

shell13b

i weigh in every friday morning at the same time.