Pros and cons of weighing daily vs weekly or monthly

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  • frisco111
    frisco111 Posts: 44 Member
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    Daily. Its hard at the beginning not to react emotionaly if the numbers are disappointing. However, with time you will get use to it and, as many of you mentioned, better understand how your body works.
  • johnthomasmoore
    johnthomasmoore Posts: 59 Member
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    I'm in the daily camp. Every morning I step on the Aria Fitbit scale which syncs over wi-fi. There is some evidence that daily weighing is associated with weight loss and maintenance success. I also monitor sleep, blood pressure, steps, activities, along with diet. The trends are what I pay attention to not the individual data points.
    In about a year I've lost about 50 pounds (23% of initial body weight) and brought my blood pressure down without meds.
    I've found trendweight.com very helpful. Nice graphs with moving averages plotted to smooth out the variability. Based on the Hacker's Diet. With a connected scale that measures body fat Trendweight will also graph fat%, fat mass, lean mass.
    I'm a data nerd and have put together a system to automate the collection and visualization of my data using MFP, Fitbit, Google Spreadsheets, Microsoft Health Vault. See my blog for details: http://johntmoore.blogspot.com/
  • considerphi
    considerphi Posts: 2 Member
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    I weigh daily and second the trendweight recommendation. I have never felt so in control of weight loss as I do when looking at that graph.
    Now, that doesn't mean it's doing exactly what I want but just that it accurately represents my progress and behaviour patterns. When I fall off the wagon and start throwing in a beer with dinner I see the corresponding slowdown/stall in my weight loss. Carefully log food on MFP and watch calorie intake, I see the graph descending nicely. Takes all the frustration out of the scale weight fluctuations.
    In fact when I did the math to calculate how much calorie intake I was comfortable with, the calorie deficit said I should lose 0.9 lbs a week
    When I first set up trendweight, it said - based on my actual weigh-ins over the previous couple of weeks - that I was losing 0.9 lbs a week.
  • stacyjh1979
    stacyjh1979 Posts: 188 Member
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    I just weigh daily after i wake up and gone to the bathroom. If i am down then i log and move on if not then i don't log and move on.

    This is EXACTLY what I do!
  • DaMarion1998
    DaMarion1998 Posts: 2 Member
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    I weigh daily (every morning when I wake up) and it doesn't bother me to do so. I like to know how far i need to go to reach my goal weight and if my weight fluctuates then I know what I need to do be doing to get back on track
  • nicsflyingcircus
    nicsflyingcircus Posts: 2,409 Member
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    I track my progress with measurements, pics in the mirror, and how my clothes fit. Threw out my scale a long time ago:)

    That's fine, but as a morbidly obese person, who has lost 74 lbs with twice that to go, the scale is a wonderful tool. How my clothes fit is useless, as everything is too dang big right now and I refuse to go buy new clothes until it cools off (I am cheap).

    That being said, I weigh daily, nekkid, after I've peed. I only log it if it shows a loss, otherwise I shrug and move on. I like seeing the number daily, heh.
  • SteveMFP123
    SteveMFP123 Posts: 298 Member
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    I weigh monthly, some weeks I don't lose much then others I lose a lot, so if I weighed weekly I'd get discouraged sometimes and that's not good for me, but if I weigh monthly I always lose something which keeps me going.
  • sweetbamaTLC
    sweetbamaTLC Posts: 170 Member
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    I've done it all. Currently weighing once a week...just before the weekend, as they are the most challenging for me:)
  • emdeesea
    emdeesea Posts: 1,823 Member
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    I weigh daily but only track when I hit a new low. I got into the habit of weighing daily to get used to the fluctuations and ups and downs, and to also see what causes me to hold on to water weight and what doesn't.

    Salt of course does, but when my carbs are higher I tend to hold on to water as well. And of course there's the lovely TOM.

    Anyway yes, I'm a daily weigher. When you see those numbers every day the shock wears off.
  • Marbella29660
    Marbella29660 Posts: 71 Member
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    Daily - would make me go mad
    Weekly - would make me hate weekends
    Monthly - seems about right

    but do what works for you, we're all different. Good luck....
  • beamer0821
    beamer0821 Posts: 488 Member
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    it all depends on you. if you allow the scale to control your emotions than i don't encourage daily weighing or even weekly weighing depending on the severity.

    i.e. when the scale does not say what you want, will that make you feel bad?

    additionally you need to understand from a biological level how weight fluctuates in your body.

    personally, i don't think daily weighing is really telling you anything useful.

    i think weekly is the most effective and useful measure, id monthly is even better. but when in weightloss mode i find weekly to be the most useful
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,742 Member
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    I weigh daily and it has helped me understand my personal fluctuations and actually keeps me from getting frustrated. Like the previous poster said, it keeps me from seeing a low day one week and a high day the next week and perhaps thinking nothing has happened. I don't log my weight every day though; I just note it and move on. If I weight a new low weight three days in a row then I will log it as a loss at MFP.

    same here.
  • 19vickb87
    19vickb87 Posts: 15
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    I weigh daily . its a habit and I can't shake it . I don't get hung up on the number but I couldn't do it weekly or monthly
  • whitetgr1
    whitetgr1 Posts: 1 Member
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    I'm a technical person and like to see the fluctuations, so I weigh myself daily in the mornings. However, I only "officially" log my weight once per week. That official recording also occurs on Thursday (mid-weekish), which allows any spiking on the weekends to not be a factor.

    For someone who cannot handle the daily fluctuations, I would recommend weekly weigh-ins only, but this method works for me.
  • TaintedVampyre
    TaintedVampyre Posts: 1,428 Member
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    I weigh-in weekly. Once I hit a certain point in achieved goals I'll be weighing myself every 2 weeks or once a month (maintenance mostly).
  • Phill2488
    Phill2488 Posts: 97 Member
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    I weigh every Monday, Wednesday and Friday

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