Scale difference. What can I trust?

enkiemonkey
enkiemonkey Posts: 82 Member
edited August 2015 in Health and Weight Loss
So I always weigh myself in the morning first thing I wake up and after the bathroom. I've been seeing very positive downward trending results in the past 15 days since I started my fitness health and weight loss plan.

Right now I am out of town at my parents house for my moms birthday. And I just stepped on the scale and I am 3 lbs lighter than my lowest recorded weight in the past 14 days (this would make 10lbs since the first day I started my journey).

At my home I have a digital scale. And my mom had one of them traditional scales.

Do people generally experience less accurate or lower weight on the traditional scales?

Obviously I'm not complaining haha. But I also want to be realistic and objective about my weight loss journey. :)

Replies

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    Scales are not perfectly calibrated. You will usually see differences when you weigh yourself on different scales. There's no way for us to know which scale is more accurate -- yours or your mother's.
  • DuckReconMajor
    DuckReconMajor Posts: 434 Member
    In general you're going to see variation on any scale you use. Typically it's better to stick to one, but if you aren't worried about 100% perfect accuracy you can log the entry for your mom's scale, just know if you'd weighed on yours it might be different.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    Use your scale at home. It is the one that you are going to use the most. The odds of finding two exactly perfectly calibrated scales in a home environment are slim.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    Wait until you get back home. The most important thing about weighing is consistency (same time, place and same bat channel).
  • jaga13
    jaga13 Posts: 1,149 Member
    Liftng4Lis wrote: »
    Wait until you get back home. The most important thing about weighing is consistency (same time, place and same bat channel).

    Agreed. I don't bother weighing myself when I'm out of town. I also only weigh myself once a week, and I'm always home within a week.
  • DianaLovesCoffee
    DianaLovesCoffee Posts: 398 Member
    If you started at say 215 on your home scale and are down to 205 pounds now. And on your mom's scale it would have said you started at 212 and are now down to 202. You've still lost 10 pounds! Either way you have lost the same amount.

    Nice work! Keep going!
  • enkiemonkey
    enkiemonkey Posts: 82 Member
    Thanks everyone. This is very helpful. I'll weigh myself when I get home (I live in a different state).

    On another note. Having broth based soup that contains veggies and meat has really really really helped with my diet and feeling full and healthy. It's been a miracle change for my diet.
  • DuckReconMajor
    DuckReconMajor Posts: 434 Member
    enkiemonkey wrote: »
    On another note. Having broth based soup that contains veggies and meat has really really really helped with my diet and feeling full and healthy. It's been a miracle change for my diet.

    yeah, those kinds of soups and salads are a godsend when trying to fill up on a low calorie count. Gives that weird feeling of "why am i full and haven't blown through my calorie goal?"
  • enkiemonkey
    enkiemonkey Posts: 82 Member
    Haha so right :)

    Bananas for me are also the filler snacks that's pretty effective
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    edited August 2015
    Heck you could use the same scale in different spots in your house and get different readings. Just stick to one scale and one spot, what matters the most is monitoring your progress anyway.
  • echmainfit619
    echmainfit619 Posts: 333 Member
    I'll add: weight yourself every day and at the same time of day. It takes another variable out of the data stream.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
    Unless you are using validated and calibrated scales, they operate in a high degree of inaccuracy. Consistency is what you are looking for and even if you're scale is not accurate it will show whether or not you are losing.
  • atypicalsmith
    atypicalsmith Posts: 2,742 Member
    Always use the same scale at the same time in the same scenario. Best is as soon as you wake up and pee. If you are at someone else's house, their scale may not be the same as yours. My old digital scale broke, and the new one I bought had me at a pound higher. This same scale travels with me once every two weeks to a friend's office, where we have a monetary incentive going on - we started out with twenty one-dollar bills, and if we lose, we collect for every full pound, and if we gain, we put in another dollar for every pound gained. BUT it's the same scale, in the same place, at the same time in the morning every other week. I am always at least three pounds heavier when I weigh then, as I've had a couple of bottles of water and a Diet Coke or two, but I don't eat anything until after the weigh-in!
  • Aceydeal
    Aceydeal Posts: 25 Member
    My digital scale has me 6 lbs heavier than the old dial one.
  • misterdale67
    misterdale67 Posts: 171 Member
    I don't know if this is any use or help, but I use a 15 lb. weight to check my scale for accuracy. You could try something like that with your home scale just for peace of mind.
  • enkiemonkey
    enkiemonkey Posts: 82 Member
    misterdale67 wrote: »
    I don't know if this is any use or help, but I use a 15 lb. weight to check my scale for accuracy. You could try something like that with your home scale just for peace of mind.

    Oh my gosh what a common sense obvious idea. This is awesome. Great method.

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