I recently realized something about myself, "weigh-ins" and pressure.
I had been weighing myself once a week, and sort of gauge my progress by how much I lost for the week. For the past several weeks I've been clipping along at a pretty good pace - 3lbs per week.
But lately, I've noticed that my mind has really been preoccupied with the hope, even stress, that I'll hit that 3lb "goal" for the week. This is kind of ridiculous, since 3lbs/week isn't really a formal goal of mine.
Anyway, I started weighing myself daily, and the stress has totally gone away. If I'm down in weight from the day before it's "yay!", and if I'm not, or even up a bit, I think "no biggie, I must be retaining a bit more water today".
This is counter to what I would have expected. I would have thought daily weighing would have made me even more preoccupied with the numbers, but it's just the opposite. I hop on in the morning, read the number, and think "ho-hum, let's have a healthy day".
I find daily weigh-ins really keep me on track and accountable. However, some people find it incredibly frustrating especially since weight can fluctuate from day to day. It's whatever works best for you! Keep up the good work!
I like to weigh daily. It is freaky when it stays the same (or even goes up) for a couple of days but then drops. But I am kinda getting used to the pattern of how I lose weight and daily weigh-ins helps me understand that.
I'm the opposite, I've only been on the scale once "showed a good decrease" in. the eight weeks I've been seriously committed. I use my clothes as a small reassurance to show I'm doing something right. I have just committed myself to the change and don't allow the numbers to influence me. I am afraid of the scale if I weighed regular and had to see the jumps I'm worried I'd lose hope and quit. So for me right now I'm happy knowing I'm making healthier choices for myself without being consumed by scale numbers. Keep up the good work and congrats for finding " your" way to ease the stress.
I really like weighing daily. It makes me much more aware of the NORMAL ups and downs of the scale. I know I haven't eaten enough calories to gain two pounds of fat (7000? you've got to be crazy. Not even on an Up Up and Away Day do I eat that much extra!). I'm much less likely to get upset by fluctuations in weight.
I weighed daily for over two years and it worked for me. Weighing once a week would have driven me bonkers. Well, it did drive me bonkers 15 years ago when I did WW as I couldn't figure out why some weeks I would lose 5 pounds to be followed by weeks I would lose zero!
Now that I know my patterns extremely well, I don't need to scale to know how I'm doing. I know my patterns I know when I'll see gains and losses, so I'm doing this little experiment of no scale for about 3 months. I will only weigh myself when I know it will be my most likely day(s) to show a loss before a monthly weight gain begins.
I think daily weighing can be very beneficial It does teach us that every day is different. That many things besides fat make us gain and lose weight temporarily.
This is the first time daily weighing has worked for me. Other times, I wasn't emotionally healthy enough to handle it (it could set me off for a really bad day). Now that I can, I find this to be much preferable than weekly weighing. It keeps me accountable, it helps me understand my flucuations better, and helps me understand what works and what doesn't. When I start veering off the path of eating right, the scale reminds me before it gets too bad. For sure, daily weighing has been a good thing for me these days.
I weigh only once a week for data, although now & again I might hop on to have a look. Sometimes I change my weigh-in day but mostly I stick to the schedule.
Last edited by Amarantha2; 03-10-2013 at 07:24 PM.
I weigh when I feel like it. Generally a minimum of once a week, but if I need to, I'll even skip that. Usually, it's several times a week though I don't want to say I weigh daily because I don't want to feel like I *have* to weigh every day if I don't want to.
I want to take advantage of the scale, but not give it power over my life in any way - not what it says, and not whether or not I weigh in.
I sometimes see people post about having to use a lot of will power to resist weighing. I feel like I have much better things to use that will power one!
I think at the start of my journey, daily weigh ins would have driven me insane, but now I feel like a strange sense of peace envelopes me whatever the numbers say when I weigh daily. When I weigh weekly, there is anticipation that builds the whole week such that if I don't hit a target, I'm crushed. Daily weigh ins feel like just informational numbers to me.
I think the key for me is weighing in regularly though. However frequently or infrequently. I tend not to wear my clothes super-fitted and I bloat fairly easily, so it's hard for me to use clothes as a gauge of progress.
My pattern seems to be that I weigh daily when I'm trying to get weight off. I find that it helps me detect patterns -- including figuring out which foods cause me to retain some water. It also provides me with reinforcement that is much needed.
In the past, I wouldn't weigh in if I knew I'd been eating badly. Then I'd finally get on the scale and be in a state of shock that I'd gained between 15-30 pounds in a few weeks' time.
So, I've made a commitment to weigh in daily from now on to make sure that once I get all this weight off, it stays off!
Scale epiphany (for now)
