So I just started OP again watching the moderation and the foods I am eating. Counting Calories as well. But my biggest problem is I really want to weigh myself. I weighed myself on Wed. Morning and I decided I wouldn't weigh myself again until the following week.

My reasoning behind this is
1. If I weigh myself daily I become obsessed with weighing myself and if I don't see that scale moving daily I freak out and think it's not working it's never gonna come off.
or
2. If I weigh myself and I have lost weight and I get on the scale and I see a good loss then I get over confident and think I can eat more one day or have a cheat day or whatever. I just get over confident.

So I decided to wait a week. Eat Healthy all week and then weigh myself after the whole week of eating healthy.

My problem is though I really want to get on the scale. How do you keep from obsessing over the scale?

I weigh daily, so take my views with a grain of salt! But if I didn't weigh daily, I'd just obsess about the scale all week.

The trick, I think, is to take what the scale tells you and try to figure out what made it up or down that day. Remember you'll never, ever put on a pound or two or fat in 24 hours. So short-term fluctuations are always due to any number of factors: how much food, by weight, you ate the day before; how much water you've drunk; ToM; are you retaining water, have you had a BM yet, and so on.

So the daily fluctuations are really nothing to stress over! 24h gains aren't due to your overall plan, and neither are 24h losses.

You can't control the scale. All you control is what you put in your mouth and how much you move. The scale just gives feedback. Duh, obvious, I know, but I was caught up in scale-think for so long that I have to remind myself of this.

Well, hide the thing in a closet or something! You're better off to wait for a week, as you had promised yourself. Just concentrate on staying on plan...

Jay

I think a Week of Waiting would give me accurate results probably not just water weight thats why I chose a week. I am gonna stick to my plan. If I hind it I will know where it is lol. I could go get it lol. But I was thinking about having my husband hide it where I won't find then I can't go get it.

We will see.

Hi Kayhm0711,

I think opinions vary regarding the scale, so feel free to ignore mine. :smile:

I just weigh myself whenever I want to. I have learned a few things about myself by doing this. For instance, if I eat 'off plan' for whatever reason, whether the calories are over my limit, or not, I'm going to gain and it is going to take me about three days to get the scales back to normal. I have also learned that I lose in "spurts". That is, I can weigh myself every day for nine days in a row and the scales won't move, on the tenth day, I drop two or even three pounds. I did not lose that weight in one night.

The hardest part, I think, is just not letting the scale get to me. If I'm up, it will come back down. If I'm down, I choose not to record the loss until I've weighed in twice at the lower weight.

This just works for me. You'll find what works for you. Hang in there!

I weigh every day, and plan to continue weighing every day for the rest of my life. Before I had kids, I kept my weight within 4 lbs. of 135 for 4 years (After a loss of 45 pounds) by making a daily weigh-in part of my ritual. Wake up, pee, get on the scale, and then put a dot on the chart. To be a daily weigher, however, you really have to accept that your body will, in fact, flucuate, sometimes on a daily basis, up to three or even four pounds -- the key is if it stays there for more than a few days (or a little over a week PMSing for me...). I have tried the once a week technique and the once a month technique in my life...but they simply did not keep me accountable once I was in maintenance, and that is how I ended up having to lose 45 lbs. again after baby number three...so it is back to the daily weigh-in for me.

In the beginning I did obsess a little bit about the stupid little ups and downs and the weeks when the scale didn't seem to budge day after day...but as I've stuck with it, those feelings have pretty much disappeared and I've been able to watch the PATTERN of my weight loss...three pounds magically dropping overnight, etc., etc., and the week and a half of water retention pre-period. At this point, a morning "up" means almost nothing, as it isn't fat gain -- impossible in a 24 hour period -- and I have learned the value of drinking water, limiting sodium, eating fiber, etc. by doing it this way.

So what I have to say is this...weigh as often as feels comfortable to you, but don't feel bad if you want to weigh more often...because that can also work. In fact, the Mayo Clinic did a big study on people who had maintained weight loss for a period of, I think it was, at least two years...daily weigh-ins were a BIG common denominator.

Oh, but if you weigh every day -- chart it. Then you can really see the downward trend instead of just trying to remember how much you've lost...or how long you've been at a certain weight, or even a few pounds up, etc.

Schumeany, thank you for posting that. I feel the way you do. It's easier for me to control if I know what my body is doing day to day. So, I weigh each morning. Even if it's just water weight, I would rather get on it THAT DAY (and not take the chance) rather than discovering added pounds several days later.

I also weigh every day and I second what some above have said about charting it, weighing at the same time each day, being realistic about what to expect, and not obsessing over 24-hour gains/losses. The scale is a tool that can help keep us accountable, but it isn't helpful to let it take over our minds.

I have to admit I obsess over how much I weigh each day. I don't chart daily, but I do chart on Saturday and/or Sunday.

I started out wanting to weigh once a week to keep from obsessing. I am now weighing once a day in the morning and I'm liking it.

I chart everything on the Daily Plate so I can see the trend. On days that I'm up, I just attribute it to water or other factors. I bought a scale that goes in .2 lb increments and like that a lot better than my old scale.

I enter my current weight every morning on the Daily Plate and on my tickers. My blog has a running list of my weekly monday morning official weigh-in. If I'm trying to assess how my program is doing I look at the weekly numbers.

One nice thing is that weighing in the morning is a win-win for me. If I'm down then I feel happy and motivated, if I'm up I know Daily Plate will adjust my daily calories upward slightly so I look on the bright side of getting a few more calories to play with that day.

So far my overall trend is down. I love looking at my weight chart and just seeing the slope of the line. The occasional blip when I go up a pound doesn't have much psychological weight when seen in context of the graph.

Bottom line - if you weigh daily I concur with the others, make sure you chart it!

i have the same problem. i'm always weighing myself in a morning and find i get really happy if it goes down but the next day its back up where i started. so i really can say dont do it. once a week is fine but more than that and it really does hurt. i'm going to hide my scales this week so i cant weigh myself

I also weigh daily, just the once in the morning when I get up. I know its pointless after this because drinking, eating, exercising makes it go all over the place. When I had just started I was scale obssessed and I jumped on the scale multiple times a day. I do the 5 pound challenges now which is my excuse to weigh daily but I would still be weighing daily anyways. I have learned a few things about my body doing this. For instance I usually stay the same weight for a 4-5 days then lose 2-3 pounds over a couple of days then stay the same weight again and just repeat this pattern. I don't lose in little increments. I also don't gain any extra weight during TOM. Anyway, I just say do what you need to now and don't beat yourself up if you jump on the scale a lot right now. I am sure after a month or two when you understand the way your body loses weight you will cut back to just the once or twice per day.

That basically sums up how I deal with it. I crack myself up. I go through phases where I don't weight myself for a week and than i have times where I weigh myself every day or a couple of times a day wanting the scale to move. I'll whine that I'm on a plauteau, than wham, I've lost 2 pounds. I also don't record the loss until I've kept it that weight for a couple days.

I'm up two pounds today, which makes no sense, but I'm not sweating it cause I've been 163 for mebbe 4 days and I've been eating OP so I know today is just 'one of those things'.

Good luck!

I guess I have a completely different opinion here!
The scale has always ended up driving me absolutely crazy no matter how often I weigh (usually ended up being every other day, but sometimes once a week). It seemed that no matter what it said, it wasn't good enough, I'd end up getting frustrated.
I'm not strong enough for that right now, I only started this whole thing a month or so ago and I started slow. I don't actually own a scale, or even a tape measure, and I've been trying to just set food and exercise goals to better focus on getting healthier..

Although, if you don't know which calorie range you should be eating in, I guess watching trends on the scale would be a decent indicator. I already know how much I can eat to lose weight, and I just go a little bit up and down each day calorie-wise.

Good luck

Weigh 2x per week. Only count one of them. Although I have at times weighed myself more than that and have thought about weighing daily. I say do whatever works for you. If you can do it daily and be okay with the changes and only focus on one day as your offical weigh in day then go for it. Otherwise get rid of the scale send it to a friends house so you have to go there to weigh or something until you get used to only doing a weekly WI.