Why do I feel the need to get on the scale EVERYDAY! I know im not going to get a 10lb loss over night or in a week for that matter, so why do I keep jumping on that dang thing? Hubby doesnt, LOL. And I tell him, dont weigh yourself everyday.....but then I do it. LOL I guess if I "see" that im NOT gaining it will keep me motivated. I dont know but its really annoying me.
Daily weighing (but only once a day) keeps me sane and focussed! I've weighed every day for 141 days and it is really helping me understand body fluctuations. Of course I'm happy on loss days and less pleased on maintain or gain days but it is becoming "Hey" rather than omg on the bad days, and that means I just note the number and stay on plan the rest of the day.
Like Rosinante, daily weighing helps me helps me stay focused. I am used to the fluctuations and they don't bother me. I have a tendency to procrastinate and it was not uncommon for me to avoid the scales for months or even years. That made it easy for me to ignore the consequences of overeating. It made it easier to think "I will start a diet tomorrow." I needed to make weighing myself a habit.
We say it often here, but we all have to find what works for us. If daily weighing does not drive you crazy there is nothing wrong with it!
I weigh myself more frequently than I should, but It keeps me on plan. I was thinking about a greasy fast-food meal last night. (Yay hormones!!!) I stepped on the scales and saw that I was holding 4 lbs in water weight. I know it's just water...but I didn't want the salt that comes from the drive-thru to cause it to stay there even longer, so I passed.
Daily weighing is a good thing if you ask me. Knowing that I have to face that scale every morning keeps me on my toes. There's nothing wrong with it and everything right with it, IMO.
Just make sure your food choices don't change because of what it does or does not tell you. Weigh, note the number and move on. Think of it as just part of your daily health care routine. It's your body and you should be aware of what's going on with it.
Weighing daily is what gives me confidence that I will be successful with maintenance. I can not bury my head in the sand if I must face the scale every day. I only wish I'd known that sooner!
For some, weekly weighing is great advice! Some work best with monthly weighing. But I learned right here in this forum that some people have great success with daily weighing.
And I obsess LESS when I allow myself to weigh whenever I want. There's no wondering...I hop on and I know.
I'm going to take a contrary position from most of the others on this thread.
Personally, I just can't do daily weigh ins. If you ever read a post in which I say I've taken up this practice, then please intervene, because it was a symptom of my former eating disorder from 11 years back.
In those days, I weighed myself three times daily, as my old office had a scale in the airless windowless little room where the filing cabinets were kept. I hopped on the scale compulsively at a certain time -- woe to someone who detained me during my usual weighing time -- and wrote down the number in my food journal, even though any upward trend in the numbers devastated me emotionally. Paradoxically, a higher number could make me binge. Or go off & exercise for three hours straight. Or become miserable if I'd already exercised & knew my schedule left no time to get to aerobics class in the evening as well as in the morning.
I'm not in that mental place now. But I associate daily weighing with being not quite sane or healthy. And so I won't do it. Ever again.
Once a week is enough, with an occasional changeup -- like when I return from a trip & trying to figure out the effects of a radical disruption in routine & food choices.
That was part of my bargain with myself, when I set about losing the weight in a more healthy, non-obsessive manner -- that I would try not to think about numbers or do a lot of calculating. Which meant limiting myself to weekly weigh-ins, and if something happened to prevent the weigh-in, to just skip it till the following week.
I am a person who naturally puts a lot of pressure on herself, so my plan meant removing some of that pressure. I tend to become too exact & perfectionistic & routine-bound. (Definitely OCD tendencies there.) For someone whose nature is the opposite -- someone who has trouble sticking with a plan or following things through -- daily accountability is probably great. For me, it makes me a slave to the scale in the worst way.
I don't own a scale for mental health reasons. I track my calorie deficit on a daily basis so I know I'm staying on track but only get on actual scale once a month.
I don't own a scale for mental health reasons. I track my calorie deficit on a daily basis so I know I'm staying on track but only get on actual scale once a month.
For someone whose nature is the opposite -- someone who has trouble sticking with a plan or following things through -- daily accountability is probably great. For me, it makes me a slave to the scale in the worst way.
And this would be me! I think once I start losing & seeing changes then I can got to once a week, maybe even longer.
I am a monthly weigher, and I think the main reason this is working for me right now is that I have devised a very doable plan for myself and I'm sticking to it very well. That being the case, I know myself well enough to know that I will be sad if I get on the scale and don't see a loss (which would for sure happen if I weighed daily, and even occasionally with a weekly weigh-in). Every time I have stepped on the scale since I started this, I am rewarded with what seems like a pretty substantial loss to me, and I am renewed in my energy to continue. I would be on an emotional roller coaster constantly if I were to see the daily fluctuations right now, this I KNOW about myself. And now, rather than finding out what I weigh and THEN looking to my body to see if I "see/feel" it, I am seeing/feeling the changes in my body FIRST and then looking to the scale to see what that translates to in pounds.
A couple things I had to promise myself before I started this weigh-in method.
1) If I start to veer even slightly off my plan, I automatically lose the privilege of weighing monthly and MUST go back to once a week.
2) When my weight loss starts to stall or slow a bit (I have a LOT to lose), I MUST re-evaluate my weigh-in strategy so my plan can be very specifically tweaked to get the losses going again.
Everyone has a different scale strategy that works for them. Just throwing mine out there!
I feel some bizarre sort of empowerment weighing daily. I went through a stall for two weeks that had me slightly agitated (especially since I'm not far into my weight loss time line). It wasn't until then that I started recording my daily numbers (I always weighed daily, but didn't record them except once per week). Once I studied the numbers I realized I wasn't truly stalling. I was having fluctuations throughout the week, then I'd suddenly drop, then move slightly up, and go back down. This knowledge and the ability to look through my journal at my weights and SEE on paper how my weight is changing (when I can't see it on myself) is priceless for me on this journey. It really helps keep things in perspective. 14 pounds on my body doesn't look like a difference, but 14 pounds on paper looks amazing.
Last edited by thewronggirl; 10-12-2010 at 11:32 AM.
Wll someone please come & hide my scale on me!?
I know im not going to get a 10lb loss over night or in a week for that matter, so why do I keep jumping on that dang thing? Hubby doesnt, LOL. And I tell him, dont weigh yourself everyday.....but then I do it. LOL I guess if I "see" that im NOT gaining it will keep me motivated. I dont know but its really annoying me.
