How often should you weigh yourself?

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tx714
tx714 Posts: 6
in Health and Weight Loss
How often should I weigh myself? Daily? Weekly? I weigh myself every single morning, but this is becoming a very unhealthy obsession! How often do you weigh yourself??

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  • megansoriano
    megansoriano Posts: 158
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    Well, I was weighing myself once a week. Then I stopped losing weight so quick and I started measuring. I have actually decided only to weight myself once every couple of weeks. I see the inches going but the scale is not keeping up and I get a little upset. Don't let the scale control your motivation!
  • formersec
    formersec Posts: 233 Member
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    Weight Watchers got me into the habit of weighing once s week. The reasoning was that weight can go up or down each day or even several times a day. If you don't know that, all those fluctuations can stress you out, maybe even discourage you. Once I had to weigh every day (doctor's orders) and it did make me nuts. Don't have to do that anymore, thank goodness.
  • amiller7x7
    amiller7x7 Posts: 202 Member
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    I used to hear that once a week was considered a kind of "standard" with more frequent re-weighing being distracting due to normal body mass variations (eg water content, etc.). The value of weight monitoring as one of the major behavior modification strategies was reported by the National Weight Control Registry folks -
    "Consistent self-monitoring of weight: a key component of successful weight loss maintenance"
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18198319?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

    Recently in a 2011 book titled "Willpower" (which has caused some controversy) Bauermeister and Tierney suggest their evidence supported daily weighing as being better (to my surprise). If you do the daily weighing, then by all means realize that the data will have variations (sometimes over a week from personal experience) and don't over-react to the numbers. My thinking is that if I eating right and exercising right (and enough) then the weight etc will take care of themselves. The path for progress in weight loss may not be monotonically downward however!

    The Willpower book assertions have both pro and con advocates and their inputs have been discussed at:
    Pro - http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/how-to-boost-your-willpower/
    Con - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/opinion/sunday/willpower-its-in-your-head.html

    In the end game, we each have to decide what is right for ourselves on nutrition and exercise - others can provide advice, guidance and perspective, but ultimately each of us has to decide on our own unique, right path.
  • sarahtroupe
    sarahtroupe Posts: 164
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    Every single day and thats bad because it really starts to determine the beginning of my day im so done with that!!! Im only weighing in once a wk starting today!!!!
  • galvodka
    galvodka Posts: 102
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    I like to weigh myself once per week but realistically usually weigh myself twice per week...once again at week halfway point. I try not to weigh myself too much because I find that I do tend to manipulate my food/exercise too much based on what scale says instead of just doing my best with exercise and eating as healthy as I can. I find living week-to-scale-to-week to be frustrating and may try to weight myself twice per month in future.

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