[Beach Patrol]

The human body is very complicated machinery. Some of the lowest calorie foods are quite heavy because of the water and fiber. Digestion doesn't work on clockwork. Even if you eat exactly the same food every day, the speed of digestion will still vary, because it's affected by all sorts of variables, including your activity level, your stress level and other factors in your environment and physiology. To be graphic, what you poop and pee out today isn't necessarily from the food you ate within the last 24 hours.

Say you ate 10 lbs of lettuce yesterday (unlikely, but bear with me). The calories would be negligible, but if you get on the scale, you're going to be 10 lbs heavier until you pee and poop out those 10 lbs. How long is it going to take? Well the liquid may come out very soon, but it may not, and the solid part may or may not be pooped out within 24 hours (Digestion can take up to 72 hours - so you can have up to three days worth of digesting food in your gut).

OK - this makes sense! I didn't even consider the actual TIME it takes for the body to complete its digestion - & that we're all different & even our own bodies take different times to digest the same meal, etc. But thinking of drinking a big glass of water & then immediately seeing ONE POUND on the scale made me remember: If I weigh with my shorts, t-shirt & flip-flops, then step off the scale & get naked ( ) and step back on the scale, I'm a pound or sometimes two pounds down. But if I pile those clothes on the scale, they don't necessarily weigh the 1 or 2 pounds - weird! BUT YEAH... the scale is NOT the do-all-end-all of weight loss. My clothes are sure telling me that (droopy tank top today... TOO droopy! must give to Goodwill on next closet clean-out!!!)

Thanks, Kap

[mamamorgan]

I only weigh twice a week. Once in the middle of the week and once on my weigh in day at the end of the week. Middle of the week, I am usually up and end of the week, I am down. If I weighed myself everyday, I would feel too stressed to keep going. Everyday that my weight was up my self-esteem would plummet and I would eat the minimum calories and exercise as much as humanly possible. I don't need that. I need to eat about 1300 a day, and exercise 3 to 4 times a week, WITHOUT stress. It just goes so much easier.

Weight fluctuates and that is exactly why I stay off the scale.

[Beach Patrol]

I weigh everyday (sometimes both a.m. & p.m.) specifically to see those fluctuations. It helps me keep in mind that the body does do up/down/up/down throughout the day and that's it's quite normal for it to do so. If I weigh just once a week, and happen to see the scale go "up" during my weigh-in time, then I would have that little "panicy" feeling and get a little crazy.

We all handle it differently! And that's OK!

[sheramama]

My weight either fluxes constantly or stays the same for a long period of days and then poof-a few pounds decrease. I get frustrated all the time because of it.

I measure myself. Take last month: I bounced around from an 11lb to 9lb loss. But, I lost 12.5 inches all over. Try it. It'll make you feel better.