Yep, I always weigh at least once a day (every morning) and usually twice a day (also before bed), and sometimes more often.

I always believed the old wive's tale "don't weigh more than once a week, or you'll get discouraged," but it dawned on me that I'd only be discouraged if I expected daily weight loss. If I wanted to learn about "normal fluctations," I'd have to weigh more often, and for a while I weighed before and after every time I ate, drank, or went to the bathroom. I learned a lot.

I realized that I cannot gain a pound from a two ounce candybar. In fact, I cannot gain a pound unless I eat at least a pound (and even then to gain a pound, from a pound, it would have to be a pound of pure fat)

Weighing myself after eating off plan, gave me a way to see "worst case scenario." It counteracted the stray thought of "I've blown it now, I might as well keep eating for the rest of the day (or weekend)."

There is no "blown it." If I eat a two ounce candybar, or small bag of chips, I've only (possibly) set myself back by roughly an ounce to an ounce and a half (218 - 330 calories).

Now of course, each ounce/calorie adds up, but when I've lost track of how off-plan I've gotten, getting on the scale is a reality check for me. I choose to look at it that way, and I also refuse to see a weight gain as a reason to gain more.

This is the biggest wive's tale of weight loss, that if you gain weight, you might as well gain some more before starting over. What kind of ***-backwards logic is that, anyway? But it is how we're "taught" to diet. We all know it's wrong and we do it anyway, because it's how we see everyone else do it.

I didn't realize how many times I had intentionally thrown myself off the cliff I was climbing after a small stumble. It was a bit like learning to play organ/keyboards when I was younger. If I made a mistake, I would start over. I never played a piece imperfectly to the end. I always started from scratch or it "didn't count." I realized I was doing weight loss the same way. If I realized that I'd made a mistake, I had to "start fresh" the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year. And if I realized a WOE wasn't for me, I almost always took a "break" between diets long enough to regain all the weight (and then some). At least in the back of my mind, I was "starting over" and to start over, I had to regain all of the weight (or more) before I started over.

I wasn't consciously planning weight loss this way, but it was the way I'd seem most people do it. It's a pattern I fell into without realizing it.

"This time" has been different, mainly in that I've decided to be an experiment of one, and would end up having to "unlearn" all the ineffective strategies I didn't even realize I had learned. For me, my food journal helped me discover what was effective, and what was not, and I found that so much of what works for me, flies in the face of almost everything I've learned or absorbed about weight loss.

I don't have to be perfectly on plan to succeed. I just have to do better, consistently.

I can weigh as often as I like, as often as I find useful.

I can follow any plan I want, I can even choose a different plan every day. If I find it's not working the way I can accept, I can move on to another plan, without having to have so much as a single day's break.

No matter what, even if I see a temporary gain, I don't have to get discouraged (and if I don't get discouraged, my motivation is much higher and more sustained).

Low-carb isn't unhealthy, or unsustainable. Even though I have a hard time sticking to it, that's ok. The more consistently I try, the better I get and the more I lose, and the less hungry I am.

If something works for someone else, doesn't mean it will work for me.

Sustainable isn't just about finding what I can stick with, it can also be about learning to stick with something that is effective

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What's true today, may not be true tomorrow. If something works (mentally & physically) today, it won't necessarily work forever. If circumstances change, then so must I.


There are a thousand other lessons I learned, and most of them required unlearning something I thought I knew (or didn't even know I had learned and believed).

Yeah, I know I rambled and got off track. I tend to do that. But it's really been important for me to "think outside of the box" to sustain weight loss. For most of my life I thought I was lazy and unmotivated, when I actually had been putting intense and sometimes even superhuman amount of work into strategies that were ineffective. I had learned to fail at weight loss (and I did it spectacularly).

Learning weight loss, has been more about unlearning than learning. I now take every bit of weight loss "common wisdom" with a huge grain of salt, because two of the biggest nuggets of common wisdom (that I followed for more than 30 years) turned out to be complete hooey for me (that weighing daily was discouraging and counterproductive and that carb restriction was unhealthy and unsustainable).

Keep an open mind, experiment, record and periodically evaluate your results, and repeat the process over and over and over again. Do what works, not what everyone says works.

Oh my kaplods your "off track" post sang to me! LOL That's exactly what I've learned from the scale.

was starting to get worried until i saw this post...this is soo me. every time i go in the bathroom (which is lots) i weigh myself. know i shouldnt but know that if i put the scales away i will stop watching what i eat and put the weight back on again. purely psychological i think!!

i used 2 weigh myself once a week in the morning.
but even that has caused me stress and anxiety.
so now ive made it once a month.

I let my doctors weigh me, whenever I go is when I get weighed, usually about once a month. I can't stand having a scale in the home. I developed an obsession with it. I started weighing all the time and I was going nuts :dizzy: with it so I threw out a beautiful scale! Now I leave it up to the professionals and am much happier with that. :)

almost daily. but always after i wake up, after i pee, totally naked and before i shower.

I could lie and say once a week, or day...but I know I have a problem..2-3 times a day. LOL I dont know why, but if the number is is lower at night/ or the same I know the next morning I usually have a loss. UGH>I am obsessive.

I go through different phases. Most of the time I am an "all day weigher". I will weigh first thing in the morning before I shower (thinking my wet hair would add a few ounces!...I know obsessive) I will then (if I am home) proceed to weigh off and on during the day to watch the fluctuations. I, too, learn the patterns and that plateaus are usually hormonal. However, there have definitely been times when I have thrown the scale away only to end up buying a new one a month later, and times when I have cut down to once a week, or once a month. It kind of depends where I am mentally and emotionally.

I was worried for a while when reading through these posts. I weigh up to 7 times during the day and for the month of March I have been writing every weigh down. First thing in the mroning after pee naked is the one I count. For a pound to count as gone it has to be gone two consecutive days in a row. But, then out of curiousity I weigh after my am workout, after lunch, at 3:30, after pm workout, after dinner and bedtime. Never gotten all 7 (I don't do two workouts in one day very often).

I've changed my answer since really starting to lose and getting a scale ..... now its everytime Im go past it in the bathroom ... :)

I hear ya!! I weigh only on Sundays at 7am.

That's me too! I already had the scale but never used it until I started this effort and now i step on whenever I see it. The funny thing is that it reads 10 pounds light vs the wii fit and the gym scale. But thats ok bc I just add the 10 back on in my head - it's the difference that really matters. I keep wondering if it will get closer to being accurate as I my weight declines. I can't wait to see!

I weigh myself every morning but only count what the scale says on Sunday. It keeps me motivated during the week plus it's interesting to see how my weight fluctuates each week.

Whenever I feel like it? Is that bad? I try lately to weigh myself at least once a week I'm not really being "hardcore" so I'm pretty much checking when I weigh myself to make sure that I haven't gained a ton of weight.

When I am in hardcore (eat super health work out lots) mode I weigh almost daily because it keeps me focused. (I get really obsessive)

Only once a week, otherwise it drives me crazy. Oh, and always at the same time.