Have to stop looking at the scale everyday
chuckyjean
Posts: 201 Member
It is great to see weight go down everyday but when it goes up a smidge it is depressing. Think I am going to just start weighing in once a week.
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Replies
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Some people like to see the fluctuations from day to day and some don't. It sounds like once or twice a week might be better for you.0
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I definitely don't weigh everyday because it can mess w my head. Once or twice weighing in works well for me0
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Agree with Eileen. Just be aware that you may not see the expected progress if you weigh once a week either; the daily water weight fluctuations (yes, even when you weigh at the exact same time, in the same clothes, on the same scale, at the same place, which you should, no matter how often you choose to weigh yourself) can easily mask more than a week's real fat loss or gain. It may look as if you've gained, and you've really lost, or vice versa. While modern scales have become very accurate, they haven't become much more useful; they just display the weight of everything that is contained inside your body at that particular moment, including the contents in your stomach and intestines, which will vary a lot during the day and from day to day. Add to that that the modern view of healthy weight loss per week has been drastically reduced (and that is wonderful), but this is undercommunicated - it can only be expected that lots of people fear the scales, totally unnecessarily.
In my opinion, all this points to that promotions of weekly weighings should stop. Daily or monthly would be so much better.0 -
It could be that you ate a high salt food that is making you retain water. I have learned about my body and salt by weighing daily. I ignore my weight after a high salt day or heavy alcohol.
It's like looking at your checkbook. You have to look at it even if you know it's a disaster.0 -
Yeah, I ate a lot of junk food yesterday. Slice of pumpkin pie with a dab of cool whip. A cup of stuffing. An ice cream bar. I guess maybe not a lot but a lot of carbs
But I was still 500 below my calorie intake for the day. Guess I will still weigh myself everyday, as I hate the suspense of not knowing and not let a gain of .4 lbs ruin my day.0 -
It all depends on how you like to get your information I guess. Personally I like to weigh every day and the same time, and see the fluctuations in all their glory. I only update my weight on here when I hit a new low though.
I choose not to weigh in weekly, because if I was at 190lbs one day, and then lost 1lb over the next few days, but experienced an upward fluctuation on day 7 when I weighed in again, it would seem like the whole week was a blowout to me. I like the constant feedback from my scale I guess
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HappyCampr1 wrote: »I weigh daily, but I use a trending app called Happy Scale that helps me keep the weight in perspective. Because it trends, it keeps me from reacting to every up and down in the scale. The past three days I was exactly 147.4 pounds. Today I weighed in at 148.6. Since I was only over my calories by 500 calories yesterday (Christmas Eve celebrations!), I know there is no way I gained over a pound. The trending app knows that too and helps adjust for day to day fluctuations.
I can't find happy scale in the Google play store0 -
I'm not too thrilled when I see my weight go up but I still weigh every day. I use TrendWeight, which seems similar to Happy Scale. TrendWeight also shows LBM (estimated obviously) and I base my protein intake on that instead of x amount per lb. of body weight. https://trendweight.com/0
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Yeah, it CAN be depressing sometimes...but I too like to see every day where I am...that way I can review what I ate and know that those dishes cause me to bloat...My scale has gone up by as much as Five Pounds in a week but thankfully dropped back down with a few ounces loss by the end of the week.0
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I weigh almost every day and yes it can be hard to see the numbers go up instead of down. But I find that it helps me to stay on track when I am having a harder day. Using Trendweight is helpful but then you have to log your weight every day and the act of putting that higher number into print is sometimes a big challenge. It took me a little time to be okay with that part. Disabling the function of MFP that notifies your friends every time you lose weight has helped me with that since I am often just losing the weight I gained from the to salty meal ber the weekend. Trendweight reminds me that I am still on the right track when it might seem I am going backwards.0
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This is one of things that really does depend on your mindset. I started weighing once a week then moved to every day hoping it would help me to see the daily variations and accept them rather than get depressed if the weekly weight went up one week. It actually ended up making me feel worse so I'm back to once a week but with the knowledge now that if it does go up one week it's not a problem, as long as I stay on track it will usually go back down again the next week.0
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There are some who can't handle fluctuations and they SHOULDN'T weigh everyday especially if it affects their mood for the rest of the day.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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I have the same problem0
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It all depends on how you like to get your information I guess. Personally I like to weigh every day and the same time, and see the fluctuations in all their glory. I only update my weight on here when I hit a new low though.
I choose not to weigh in weekly, because if I was at 190lbs one day, and then lost 1lb over the next few days, but experienced an upward fluctuation on day 7 when I weighed in again, it would seem like the whole week was a blowout to me. I like the constant feedback from my scale I guess
Yes. This is totally me. I've weighed daily for *years*, even when not trying to lose, and tracked it. At this point, I understand my daily fluctuations - and what causes them - very well, and they don't vex me. But I know not everyone finds that approach most effective.
BTW, I use Libra on Android for trending. It's a helpful tool, but I went through one phase where it thought I was no longer losing, but I disagreed. (My 60th birthday was the week before U.S. Thanksgiving - there were some lively weight fluctuations around then, related to unusual eating, but I knew it was largely water weight). I think that that would've freaked me out, if I were inclined to get stressed about fluctuations, so a trending tool isn't a problem-free panacea.0 -
What exactly is water weight. You get that from drinking a lot of water?0
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chuckyjean wrote: »What exactly is water weight. You get that from drinking a lot of water?
Googled it. Too much salt
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chuckyjean wrote: »chuckyjean wrote: »What exactly is water weight. You get that from drinking a lot of water?
Googled it. Too much salt
Not only that. There are other things that could encourage your body to hold onto extra water temporarily, too - starting a new workout routine, eating more carbs than usual, eating at maintenance calories when you've been in a deficit, major healing - those are some possibilities in addition to just salt. Your scale can also register a higher weight based on food still somewhere in the digestion process, too, if it's different from your usual as to volume/timing. Time of month for women is a factor, until menopause. After a while, you get to know your own fluctuations' causes (if you monitor your weight & think about possible causes).
Generally, if you're carefully tracking food/exercise, and you didn't eat 3500 extra calories (approximately) above maintenance, a pound extra on the scale is unlikely to be actual fat gain. And if it isn't, it'll be gone (typically) within a couple of days (longer if it's time of month, of course).0 -
I'm 58 so I don't have time of month anymore, one good thing about getting older. I did weigh in today and weight went down . 6 from yesterday so feel better.0
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Ever since starting this weight loss journey in August 2015, I've weighed in daily. For me, it works, but in the beginning it was hard. I go up or down pretty much daily, so it took a while to get over the ups. I also use Happy Scale, so within a few weeks I could see the trend going down even if my weight on the day was up. It started making daily gains a lot easier to take. I can go up or down 2 lbs in the space of a day, and weighing in weekly doesn't work so well for me because of that. The thing is, because I fluctuate so much, I don't consider my daily weight my actual ''weight''. I rely on my trending weight. In the end, whatever works for you 0
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I weigh daily even if I don't like what the number is. I know there will be fluctuations due to so many variables... like when and what you ate last... how much you had to drink close to bedtime, constipation, hormones, etc. But weighing daily keeps me mindful of the mission I'm on and keeps me walking on the healthy path for that day. I take one day at a time and don't worry about tomorrow. The weight will come off as a result of doing all the right things on a daily basis. That's just math, plain and simple. So I don't sweat it if the number is up..... but as soon as I see a new low, I celebrate it and log it in to MFP.0
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I'm sticking to my WW habit and weighing in on Wednesdays. Only now I weigh myself first thing in the morning vs 6:30 at night. Part of what I didn't like about WW, weighing in after eating all day . If I weigh in every day, I get disappointed if I go up and in many cases sabotage myself
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I weigh myself every morning using the Fitbit scale. Little pricy but I like seeing the overall progress. Plus when I see the scale go up, it motivates me to go out and be active.0
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divinitylove wrote: »I weigh daily even if I don't like what the number is. I know there will be fluctuations due to so many variables... like when and what you ate last... how much you had to drink close to bedtime, constipation, hormones, etc. But weighing daily keeps me mindful of the mission I'm on and keeps me walking on the healthy path for that day. I take one day at a time and don't worry about tomorrow. The weight will come off as a result of doing all the right things on a daily basis. That's just math, plain and simple. So I don't sweat it if the number is up..... but as soon as I see a new low, I celebrate it and log it in to MFP.
^^This. With all due respect, I think it would help just to get a grip on the realities of how the body works and how weight loss works. Why get depressed over a fluctuation? Why even expect that weight loss is linear? Is the weather the same every day? Do you get depressed because the temperature changes by a degree? Rather than posting thread after thread full of angst over a minor weight fluctuation (which happens daily on MFP), why not use that energy to educate yourself about how weight loss actually works and what can reasonably be expected?0 -
With all due respect some people do have emotional issues regarding food and their weight. I'm happy for you that you don't have any depression or emotional issues but criticising those who do is not very helpful and could well make someone with these problems feel worse. It's not shameful or ridiculous to have these feelings, we just need to learn how to deal with them.divinitylove wrote: »I weigh daily even if I don't like what the number is. I know there will be fluctuations due to so many variables... like when and what you ate last... how much you had to drink close to bedtime, constipation, hormones, etc. But weighing daily keeps me mindful of the mission I'm on and keeps me walking on the healthy path for that day. I take one day at a time and don't worry about tomorrow. The weight will come off as a result of doing all the right things on a daily basis. That's just math, plain and simple. So I don't sweat it if the number is up..... but as soon as I see a new low, I celebrate it and log it in to MFP.
^^This. With all due respect, I think it would help just to get a grip on the realities of how the body works and how weight loss works. Why get depressed over a fluctuation? Why even expect that weight loss is linear? Is the weather the same every day? Do you get depressed because the temperature changes by a degree? Rather than posting thread after thread full of angst over a minor weight fluctuation (which happens daily on MFP), why not use that energy to educate yourself about how weight loss actually works and what can reasonably be expected?
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What exactly does the trend part on trend weight mean.0
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chuckyjean wrote: »What exactly does the trend part on trend weight mean.
It's a statistical thing . . . difficult to explain at that technical level unless you know some statistics methods.
But you can think of it as looking at all your ups and downs as if they were plotted on a graph, looking like lots of little daily peaks and valleys. It tries to calculate whether all those little ups and downs are arranging themselves over the longer time period as a bumpy downhill, a bumpy uphill, or a bumpy level.
You know, if you are hiking on a mountain, you can be going down the mountainside, but still occasionally be climbing to get over a tiny peak on the mountainside, and not able to see the overall downhill direction because of what's limiting your view. Same thing with weight.
I used to track my weight on graph paper, one dot per day, with the days stretching from one side of the page to the other, and weight levels on the up & down direction. Here is a sample:
See how the dots go up & down every day, and sometimes stay kind of on the same basic level (plus or minus a little) for a few days, but when you look at the long time period, it's obvious that it's going down over the long haul?
Trendweight, Libra, Happy Scale & similar apps use statistics to stand back & make predictions about how that long-haul trend will look, based on current data.
I hope that helps.
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Thanks, but why are the trend numbers higher than your weight numbers0
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chuckyjean wrote: »Thanks, but why are the trend numbers higher than your weight numbers
It happens sometimes - going back to that "hiking on a mountain" example - you can be in a temporary weight that's below the long-term trend, just like you can be hiking down into a mini-valley that's below the typical downhill slope of the mountain.
If you look at my graph again, imagine drawing one *straight* line that kind of goes through between the dots, at sort of the average downhill slope over the whole time period. Then some of the dots are below that line, and some are above it. That's how the trend works, too - it sort of averages out the ups and downs, so it goes through the middle of them.
I use Libra (similar to Trendweight). When I'm losing, my daily weight is often below the trend line, but it's sometimes above it, too. The trend is the overall direction.
(I've even had Libra tell me for a week or so that I was on a *gaining* trend, when I knew I wasn't - my birthday & Thanksgiving were about a week apart, and I did a little celebratory eating on those days & a little bit in between, leading to abnormal water weight gains, so after a week of this, it thought I was gaining. But I could look at my (carefully calculated) calorie levels and know that I wasn't really gaining fat to that extent. Sure enough, a few days later, the trend went back to loss.)
The people I see succeeding on MFP over the long term seem to be those who carefully weigh/log their food & exercise, stick to the plan consistently over the long haul, and learn to roll with some unexpected weight changes without freaking out, derailing psychologically, etc. Trendweight can help, but disciplining ones mind & behavior are the real key factors, in my opinion. But it's just my opinion.0 -
The trend is a moving average,meaning that it averages your recorded weight over the last x many days. So it usually does lag your recorded weight a little bit. This method helps average out the fluctuations and see that you're (hopefully) going in the right direction even if you fluctuated up a pound or two. If you were gaining weight, then the trend line would probably be lower than your recorded weights.0
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HappyCampr1 wrote: »melmerritt33 wrote: »
With all due respect some people do have emotional issues regarding food and their weight. I'm happy for you that you don't have any depression or emotional issues but criticising those who do is not very helpful and could well make someone with these problems feel worse. It's not shameful or ridiculous to have these feelings, we just need to learn how to deal with them.divinitylove wrote: »I weigh daily even if I don't like what the number is. I know there will be fluctuations due to so many variables... like when and what you ate last... how much you had to drink close to bedtime, constipation, hormones, etc. But weighing daily keeps me mindful of the mission I'm on and keeps me walking on the healthy path for that day. I take one day at a time and don't worry about tomorrow. The weight will come off as a result of doing all the right things on a daily basis. That's just math, plain and simple. So I don't sweat it if the number is up..... but as soon as I see a new low, I celebrate it and log it in to MFP.
^^This. With all due respect, I think it would help just to get a grip on the realities of how the body works and how weight loss works. Why get depressed over a fluctuation? Why even expect that weight loss is linear? Is the weather the same every day? Do you get depressed because the temperature changes by a degree? Rather than posting thread after thread full of angst over a minor weight fluctuation (which happens daily on MFP), why not use that energy to educate yourself about how weight loss actually works and what can reasonably be expected?
I didn't take this as criticism. Seemed to me she was just making comparisons to other normal things in life to let people know that weight is the same and that to expect otherwise is not helpful. I'm sorry if you felt offended by this being pointed out. Presuming anyone who thinks like this doesn't have or hasn't had issues with weight and food is, well...presumptuous.
Thank you for receiving this in the spirit it was offered.0
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