Throw away your scale!!!!

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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! ;)
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Replies

  • Zedeff
    Zedeff Posts: 651 Member
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    Uh... muscle and water have volume too. Losing an inch doesn't exclude muscle or water losses.
  • Aviva92
    Aviva92 Posts: 2,333 Member
    edited January 2015
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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.
  • Aviva92
    Aviva92 Posts: 2,333 Member
    edited January 2015
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    Zedeff wrote: »
    Uh... muscle and water have volume too. Losing an inch doesn't exclude muscle or water losses.

    yep and you can also easily gain an inch due to water and then freak out. measurements fluctuate just as much as the scale does.
  • LAWoman72
    LAWoman72 Posts: 2,846 Member
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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.
  • T_Ciku
    T_Ciku Posts: 133 Member
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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.
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
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    LAWoman72 wrote: »
    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.
  • Driagnor
    Driagnor Posts: 323 Member
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    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 differently
  • Aviva92
    Aviva92 Posts: 2,333 Member
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    ana3067 wrote: »
    LAWoman72 wrote: »
    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.
  • SergeantSausage
    SergeantSausage Posts: 1,673 Member
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    I'll get right on that ...

    Should I throw away my food/kitchen scale and measuring cups, too?
  • eatnojunk
    eatnojunk Posts: 30 Member
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    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.
  • Serenstar75
    Serenstar75 Posts: 258 Member
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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.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    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


  • Vailara
    Vailara Posts: 2,454 Member
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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!
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
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    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.
  • OrangeBabelfish
    OrangeBabelfish Posts: 67 Member
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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 :)
  • CA_Underdog
    CA_Underdog Posts: 733 Member
    edited January 2015
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    Aviva92 wrote: »
    Zedeff wrote: »
    Uh... muscle and water have volume too. Losing an inch doesn't exclude muscle or water losses.

    yep and you can also easily gain an inch due to water and then freak out. measurements fluctuate just as much as the scale does.

    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. zid4c9u4gku4.png
    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.
  • 47Jacqueline
    47Jacqueline Posts: 6,993 Member
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    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.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
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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.
  • Alluminati
    Alluminati Posts: 6,208 Member
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    New account with 2 posts telling people to throw away their scale and eat clean. Yep. I'm on MFP.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    rabbitjb 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

    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.