Throw away your scale!!!!
ravlomama123
Posts: 49 Member
Here is my suggestion. Stop weighing yourself! Seriously. When you look at the scale, you don't know if you lost fat, water or muscle.
Use a tape measure instead. If you loose a inch, you know you lost fat.
If you can't live without a scale, weigh your self a few minutes after you wake up. It's the most accurate.
Your weight naturally goes up and down though out the day.
There is no point to weigh your self every hour.
Once every morning is all you need.
Eat clean, sweat but don't skip the cake every now and then!
Use a tape measure instead. If you loose a inch, you know you lost fat.
If you can't live without a scale, weigh your self a few minutes after you wake up. It's the most accurate.
Your weight naturally goes up and down though out the day.
There is no point to weigh your self every hour.
Once every morning is all you need.
Eat clean, sweat but don't skip the cake every now and then!
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Replies
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Uh... muscle and water have volume too. Losing an inch doesn't exclude muscle or water losses.0
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no thanks. i'll stick with the scale. common sense already tells me to weigh myself first thing in the morning and that if i weigh myself every hour it's obviously going to fluctuate. why would i do that?
tape measure is prone to human error. scale is not.0 -
I believe this can work for some people, but just to throw my experience in here, not weighing has always been a recipe for disaster for me.0
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This only works if you're absolutely dilligent about your logging. I'm not, and I know I'm not, so I need that once a week weigh-in to confirm if I'm on the right track. But if this works for you, then great. I go crazy if I don't weigh in. Even waiting that once a week is sometimes difficult.0
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I believe this can work for some people, but just to throw my experience in here, not weighing has always been a recipe for disaster for me.
Same. Not weighing leads me to get fat, although that was when I wasn't logging. I have to weigh myself otherwise I just decide to be blissfully ignorant about my body lol. I'm much too lazy to measure myself anyways. I know that when my weight goes up that it's a fluctuation and I can usually track what caused it really easily.0 -
I personally like to weigh myself every morning, and then enter it into a spreadsheet. I don't pay attention to day-to-day fluctuations, but rather look at the overall trend.
I find that it helps to keep me accountable, and if it does go up, I examine yesterday's behaviour to see if there was anything I could have done differently0 -
I believe this can work for some people, but just to throw my experience in here, not weighing has always been a recipe for disaster for me.
Same. Not weighing leads me to get fat, although that was when I wasn't logging. I have to weigh myself otherwise I just decide to be blissfully ignorant about my body lol. I'm much too lazy to measure myself anyways. I know that when my weight goes up that it's a fluctuation and I can usually track what caused it really easily.
Yep, I went years without weighing myself and I got fat. Right now I'm in maintenance mode and I weigh myself every day to make sure I don't gain. Taking measurements would not be as exact for me and seems silly. Also too lazy.0 -
I'll get right on that ...
Should I throw away my food/kitchen scale and measuring cups, too?0 -
I was told by experts in eating disorder that I should throw out the scale and don't count calories but few years later I'm at my heavest. Now I'm seeing a hormone Dr. and he said to your MFP and count calories. I know from goup therapy that a lot of people with eating disorder might weigh themselfs 10 times a day but in my case I can stick to one weighing a week. I do agree that measurement and how your clothes fit and how you feel is as important.0
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I don't think this all really needed snarky responses back. It was definitely well meaning. I weigh myself a few times a week. I record only one. I know when I fluctuate, how and why most of the time. I don't look at any one day and say, "Well I weigh more today, what did I do yesterday that caused this?" I don't think weight works quite so fast in that sense. Yes, in water fluctuations, you can see that quickly, but it has nothing to do with actual weight in fat and proper trending. If I ignore the scale, I pay for it, but I refuse to obsess over it.
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ravlomama123 wrote: »Here is my suggestion. Stop weighing yourself! Seriously. When you look at the scale, you don't know if you lost fat, water or muscle.
Use a tape measure instead. If you loose a inch, you know you lost fat.
If you can't live without a scale, weigh your self a few minutes after you wake up. It's the most accurate.
Your weight naturally goes up and down though out the day.
There is no point to weigh your self every hour.
Once every morning is all you need.
Eat clean, sweat but don't skip the cake every now and then!
Personally I like to weigh daily because I track fluctuations but I don't care about them
Measuring tapes can be wrong dependent on position and tension
Eat clean means diddly squat
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This might be good advice for some people, but I actually find that weighing is a pretty good guide. I weigh daily and look at overall trends rather than the daily figure, so it's easy to see if I'm gaining. I do measure as well, but not nearly so often, and I find I get as much variation from the measuring tape as I do from the scale!
Weighing daily also serves as a reminder that I'm on a permanent diet, and it's easy to fit into a morning routine (whereas measuring wouldn't be).
My scales were quite expensive and I use them to track other things I'm interested in (muscle/fat %, visceral fat, etc.), so I would not throw them away even if I wasn't interested in the weight!0 -
As soon as I stop weighing daily, I start to slip up in my eating. Daily fluctuations don't bother me and in fact have let me know my body better than ever, I know what happens with too much salt, not enough water, various times of the month... Of course, only weighing in the morning, as soon as you start eating and drinking your weight will start fluctuating, 500ml of water is 500g in the bottle or in your belly.0
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I weigh myself multiple times a day - because I like to see the fluctuations and I want to see how much weight a dinner is, for example.
I log my weight in a spreadsheet every morning, but I enter it on MFP once a week and look for weekly trends, rather than daily fluctuations. Yes, I may be a little obsessive but I do not trust my measuring tape. I only do that once every 3 weeks or more, so that there may actually be a difference as otherwise I could think I've lost or gained purely by how tight I pull it or where I exactly place it (since I am not about to tattoo exactly where it should go!)
As for clean eating - I don't believe in that. I do flexible dieting which I find far more sustainable. Nothing is off limits if I have allowance for it. Means I can still have steak and chips after a big workout, and far less risk of bingeing on "bad" foods after eating like a rabbit for weeks on end
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Yes! My biceps can gain an inch if I do a workout after a one month break. Alas, that's due to swelling, and not a massive gain in muscle fibers. If you want to know what a scale loss represents, try a scale that measures body fat.
In the above chart from one point in my journey, body fat trends are far more illuminating than total body weight in seeing that I'm doing something correctly. You don't need a very accurate scale to do something like this, merely a consistent one.
I totally agree about weighing at the same time each day, especially when you wake-up, and tape measures are a great alternative to weigh-ins if you're obsessive about scales.0 -
I don't own a scale; however I use the one at my Y twice a month to check in. That seems to keep me in touch.0
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I tried that all last summer. I bicycled every day. I lost inches around my middle. I thought I was doing good. But when I stepped on the scale, I discovered that I hadn't lost anything. For me, the scale keeps me honest.0
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New account with 2 posts telling people to throw away their scale and eat clean. Yep. I'm on MFP.0
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Personally I like to weigh daily because I track fluctuations but I don't care about themravlomama123 wrote: »Here is my suggestion. Stop weighing yourself! Seriously. When you look at the scale, you don't know if you lost fat, water or muscle.
Use a tape measure instead. If you loose a inch, you know you lost fat.
If you can't live without a scale, weigh your self a few minutes after you wake up. It's the most accurate.
Your weight naturally goes up and down though out the day.
There is no point to weigh your self every hour.
Once every morning is all you need.
Eat clean, sweat but don't skip the cake every now and then!
Measuring tapes can be wrong dependent on position and tension
Eat clean means diddly squat
Ditto!
The one time I decided to stop weighing myself I ended up at my highest ever weight.
It's a measuring device that gives you data and nothing more.0 -
Serenstar75 wrote: »I don't think this all really needed snarky responses back. It was definitely well meaning. I weigh myself a few times a week. I record only one. I know when I fluctuate, how and why most of the time. I don't look at any one day and say, "Well I weigh more today, what did I do yesterday that caused this?" I don't think weight works quite so fast in that sense. Yes, in water fluctuations, you can see that quickly, but it has nothing to do with actual weight in fat and proper trending. If I ignore the scale, I pay for it, but I refuse to obsess over it.
A lot of the incorrect spew on the boards is "well meaning" that doesn't mean it shouldn't be challenged and corrected.-2 -
I have been on a weight loss /maintaining lifestyle journey for years. I can honestly say that every time I stopped weighing myself I gained weight, usually about 15-20 lbs.
Being honest with yourself is the most important thing when it comes to losing/gaining/maintaining. Like another poster wrote, weighing yourself in the morning (whether it be every day or once a week) is the best way to monitor your body.
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I think the tape measure is an excellent measure of success and shouldn't be excluded, it can be used in conjunction with the scales. Many people complain about not losing weight every now and then, but their clothes fit better and their measurements are getting smaller.0
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While I truly believe our focus shouldn't be fully scale related....it's still a unit to measure progress by. I'd like to know I'm not losing or gaining too quickly, depending on my goals and my rate of which I do it does have an impact on the visual and measurement piece of it as well0
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Serenstar75 wrote: »I don't think this all really needed snarky responses back. It was definitely well meaning. I weigh myself a few times a week. I record only one. I know when I fluctuate, how and why most of the time. I don't look at any one day and say, "Well I weigh more today, what did I do yesterday that caused this?" I don't think weight works quite so fast in that sense. Yes, in water fluctuations, you can see that quickly, but it has nothing to do with actual weight in fat and proper trending. If I ignore the scale, I pay for it, but I refuse to obsess over it.
Some one got rather excited and this post got flagged for abuse..really? Nothing in this post that is abusive. I wish people would spend more time flagging the spam rather than posts as being abusive when they clearly are not...
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Weighing myself lets me know how I am doing in maintanance, I would never throw it away. Also, I dont believe I need to eat "clean".0 -
There's no way i would get rid of my scale. I am terrible at measuring myself. I can't trust that i get the measure in the same place every time and that i am doing it right. Even when i get someone to help me it makes me nervous. It's a good general reference but there's no way will i get rid of my scale and go by measurements alone.0
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i use the scale as a rough guide a few times a week, and i use how tight my jeans are as a measure. That's enough for me!0
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I through away the scale for 1 1/4 years. I gained 20lbs. Not a good plan. But thanks.0
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