How often should I weigh and measure myself?

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Soufre
Soufre Posts: 236 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Once a week? Every two weeks? Once a month?

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  • erulasse
    erulasse Posts: 141 Member
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    Depends a lot on what kinda person you are.

    1-2lb loses actually demotivate me; busting my *kitten* for 7 days and losing 1lb? Pass the cake!
    So I wait and weigh once a month; that way I only ever see around 10lb of loss each time, a lot more motivational for the loss-greedy like me. :drinker:

    - The only downside to this method is that you cannot really focus on loss as closely, so if after a month I've only lost a tiny bit, I can't pinpoint the exact week that I went wrong.
  • SharonNehring
    SharonNehring Posts: 535 Member
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    From reading various posts, it seems weighing once a week and measuring once a month is what I see most. I must weigh daily due to adjusting medication dosages, so I'll update my weight here after I've maintained a loss for a couple of days at least.
  • shortstuff17
    shortstuff17 Posts: 86 Member
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    i use to do every week but since the body fluctuates so much in weight I stopped because like erulasse says, it demotivates you, I switched it to once a month along with measuring. that way I can focus more on being healthy, if i weigh every week I focus too much on the number and often get very down on myself. just log everything and you should be able to go back and see where you went wrong.
  • TribeHokie
    TribeHokie Posts: 711 Member
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    It really depends on your disposition. There are pros and cons to every method. If you can handle the fact that your weight might go up on days due to natural fluctuations then there is no problem with once a day and just watching the overall trend. If you obsess over numbers then once a week or every other week or once a month would probably be better for you, but also remember that your one weigh-in day could be one where you have fluctuated a bit high or low. At the end of the day, no matter what you choose, just remember that you are working to an ultimate goal and it is the trend and how you look/feel that counts, not the number.
  • bwogilvie
    bwogilvie Posts: 2,130 Member
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    I recommend daily weigh-ins, with a huge caveat: you need to do some math to find the difference between your actual weight loss and the daily fluctuations, which are much larger.

    Your weight fluctuates depending on water, salt, and fiber intake, and other factors having nothing to do with calories. Using an exponentially weighted average can help you filter out the noise and focus on the trend, as John Walker explains in "The Hacker's Diet" (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/). The chapter on "The Rubber Bag" explains, briefly, the source of these fluctuations. The chapter on "Signal and Noise" explains how some simple math can filter them out. Walker explains how to do the math, but you can also set up a free account on his server to do it for you, or use a service like Beeminder or TrendWeight.com.

    If you're going to be all "OMG! I'm bloated!" if you see the number go up by 2 lbs. from one day to the next, then daily weigh-ins aren't for you. Personally, I'm not bothered, because it's the trend that matters. I find it reassuring to see that my trend is still going down even when I weigh 1.5 lb. more than the previous morning. And it's instructive to see what eating out at a restaurant does to my weight, even when I stay at my calorie goal: usually my weight goes up, presumably because of the sodium.
  • Yelswot
    Yelswot Posts: 9 Member
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    I weigh myself everyday, sometimes multiple time a day. the reason to that is, yeah of course I gained 2 lbs after lunch, but I want to see the numbers go down so I'll eat lighter for the rest of the day. if I lose weight throughout the day its very motivating.:love: also, weighing once a day help you correlate what you eat/when you eat to immediate effects, like, for instance, pizza makes me retain 2 lbs for 2 days before I go back to my normal weight. I'm sure that's from sodium. Chinese food does similar things to me. Like others are saying, whatever works for you. once a week can be good because then you have a goal to be good for 7 days and see a bigger result, hopefully.:smile:
  • bumblebreezy91
    bumblebreezy91 Posts: 520 Member
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    I weigh myself about every other day. My minimum is twice per week. If I give myself too much time (once per week), I may binge because I have time before I need to weigh in. Weighing in constantly doesn't give me time to screw up or make excuses. That's just me.

    As for measuring, I measured myself once at the beginning and I won't measure myself again until I get to my goal weight.
  • dixoncrew
    dixoncrew Posts: 186 Member
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    I weigh weekly and measure monthly, although I have considered measuring biweekly.
  • GradatimFerociter
    GradatimFerociter Posts: 296 Member
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    As often as you like.

    Experiment, find out what works for you and then do that.

    I personally weigh almost every day, as much out of habit as anything else.
  • Springfield1970
    Springfield1970 Posts: 1,945 Member
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    I have just been maintaining using an unyielding pair of jeans for a while, but when I'm cutting I weigh every morning at the same time and average the number after 7 days, plot it on a graph so I can visually see it.

    TOM, water weight from muscle repair, sodium, heavy food, ovulation, reactions to medication, fibre, diarrhea, dehydration etc all make those number swing around wildly. Look at long term trends. Don't do what I did for years and try and relate scale number and recent food eaten as a monitor . It's a recipe for disaster! Scales are good for the big picture. Tape measure and clothes fit is better and more satisfying. There's nothing better than the feeling of jeans getting roomier, I love that!
  • Iwishyouwell
    Iwishyouwell Posts: 1,888 Member
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    I went years without stepping on a scale. When I recommitted to losing weight I started tracking my weight again. I started logging once per week, but eventually went overboard and started weighing myself everyday, several times a day.

    I hated being a slave to the scale so I hopped off it and haven't gotten on one in about 5 months. I've only measured once in that time, my waist. I go by the mirror now, how I feel, and two pairs of old jeans from when I was thinner.

    Since my goal is now smaller than I ever was, I decided to step on the scale again when my smallest, back-in-the-day jeans are loose on me. I like a good surprise, so I know that seeing my new weight is going to represent an enormous loss.
  • PunkyRachel
    PunkyRachel Posts: 1,959 Member
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    I weigh every Saturday morning wearing.
  • indianarunner76
    indianarunner76 Posts: 108 Member
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    Everyday in the morning I weigh myself. Measurements every two weeks. Works very well for me.
  • whitebalance
    whitebalance Posts: 1,654 Member
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    I recommend daily weigh-ins, with a huge caveat: you need to do some math to find the difference between your actual weight loss and the daily fluctuations, which are much larger.

    Your weight fluctuates depending on water, salt, and fiber intake, and other factors having nothing to do with calories. Using an exponentially weighted average can help you filter out the noise and focus on the trend, as John Walker explains in "The Hacker's Diet" (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/). The chapter on "The Rubber Bag" explains, briefly, the source of these fluctuations. The chapter on "Signal and Noise" explains how some simple math can filter them out. Walker explains how to do the math, but you can also set up a free account on his server to do it for you, or use a service like Beeminder or TrendWeight.com.

    If you're going to be all "OMG! I'm bloated!" if you see the number go up by 2 lbs. from one day to the next, then daily weigh-ins aren't for you. Personally, I'm not bothered, because it's the trend that matters. I find it reassuring to see that my trend is still going down even when I weigh 1.5 lb. more than the previous morning. And it's instructive to see what eating out at a restaurant does to my weight, even when I stay at my calorie goal: usually my weight goes up, presumably because of the sodium.
    This is what I do... Weigh in daily, ignore the numbers, watch the trends. Keeps me a lot saner. Trendweight.com is a great site if you use one of the wifi scales.

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