Why you should log your gains-

CARNAT22

As suspected I've had a 3lb gain.

It's my own fault though - since 10th June I have been sliding into bad, bad habits!! So I am not surprised.

It feels good to admit it though and just reiterates to me that when I am not following a heatlhy eating plan I gain weight.

girlontheseesaw

Well, I log the results of my weekly weigh-in and measure-up whatever they are: gain or lose.

I'm tracking my progress in the long term, and the big picture might reveal a pattern I'd want to be aware of.

Blackthorne99

My perspective, and you don't have to agree with me:

I weigh every day, several times a day. Weight is just a number, and it changes every time we breathe, take a sip of water, use the restroom, or have a meal. We *do* fluctuate every day, all day long, and by weighing every day, several times a day, I know what NORMAL is for my body, because I have collected the information.

That's all it is - information. It doesn't define you. It doesn't change just because you didn't record it. NOT weighing doesn't make that water weight not happen. It just makes us more *ignorant* about the natural cycles of our bodies, and makes each weigh-in seem that much more important.

It's a number. Weigh yourself 27x a day or don't weigh at all - your body went through the same fluctuations whether you bothered to pay attention or not. But if you AREN'T paying attention, and aren't AWARE of how your body works, those changes seem frightening, strange, and natural cycles take on undue importance, and - more importantly - little changes can begin to compound into problems while you weren't looking.

You're here to collect data, so don't hide from it or run from it. Health and fitness is about KNOWING and UNDERSTANDING your body. You can't do that if you're pretending those changes aren't happening.

I once weighed the exact same weight (to the ounce) every day for six solid weeks. It bugged me to no end.
I once lost TEN POUNDS overnight. (I was ill and literally sweat out a gallon of fluid - my sheets were soaked).
I once gained SIX POUNDS in one day. (I was constipated and had two heavy meals - so I still had all of yesterday's food and today's still in my body AND I was approaching my period, so gained additional water weight.)

These things that I write in parentheses aren't excuses. They are explanations because I actually KNOW why those things happened, and I know because I track ALL of it - the gains, the losses, the plateaus.

It can also help your doctor figure things out when you go in. Instead of cheering that I'd lost 10lbs since my last weigh in (3 months prior at the doctor's office), I knew that it had literally happened overnight. Because I had factual data she could document in her treatment, she knew I was at risk for dehydration and electrolyte imbalance and was able to accurately treat me for that. If I had simply said "I had the flu & sweat a lot last night", she could easily have assumed that nothing unusual had occurred, and delayed effective treatment.

Take the emotion out of it, and just mark it down. All you are doing is objectively tracking data. Your body, your health, your data. If you're going to track it, track it all. You wouldn't just track your eating once a month - why track the REST of your information that way?

megruder

One word: trends. First off, I'm a geek and really like data and numbers. I also weigh every day for my own reasons; I know that not everyone can or wants to do that and that's fine. I used to only log losses and became frustrated when 2 weeks would pass with no loss. About a month ago I began logging my weight each day and I soon discovered some patterns that I wasn't aware of before. Now I have a much better grasp on how my body responds to weight loss and know that every month I have 2 weeks when I lose absolutely nothing. Those 2 weeks are still frustrating, but I KNOW it won't last.