Daily Weigh Ins?

I am debating starting to weigh in every day. Right now Im just getting back into the swing of counting all my cals every day plus exercsing regularly after taking almost all of October off.

I go back and forth between wanting to wait and weigh in every week or 10 days or doing it every day. I know daily weigh ins can lead to preoccupation with the scale but when I do it weekly I'll find myself thinking " I have 5 days til WI i can eat this entire pizza or unhealthy grinder (etc....) for dinner and do good the next few days" but then I  continue the cycle of bad eating and usually skip weighing in or weigh in and show a gain.

Just wanted to hear some opinions. Ive noticed a lot of my friends on CC do weigh in daily and it seems to work for them....Any thought would be great! TIA!

I weigh in daily. I've been doing that for about 2.5 years, and it means that I am pretty good at understanding fluctuations - I know what will cause a rise or dip in the scale, and it doesn't bug me. It helped me adjust my calories when I saw that I had gained a few pounds above my goal weight.

I am not preoccupied with weighing. I weigh in the morning, and don't think about it for the rest of the day. If I'm away from home, I don't weigh, and I don't miss it or worry about it.

This is a good explanation of why I weighed daily.

I tried the whole weigh in once a week thing, and honestly it worked for about two weeks then I started gaining/not losing and I think it was honestly making me do the same thing - making poor choices and not thinking it would affect me two days later.

If you can handle the daily fluctuations in weight (sometimes you'll be up a pound, the next day down 2, etc) and make sure to enter your weight every day and watch the trend line which shows overall loss and evens out fluctuations, I would absolutely recommend weighing in every day. I find it holds me accountable for what I ate the day before and keeps me motivated!

Good luck!

Original Post by amethystgirl:

I weigh in daily. I've been doing that for about 2.5 years, and it means that I am pretty good at understanding fluctuations - I know what will cause a rise or dip in the scale, and it doesn't bug me. It helped me adjust my calories when I saw that I had gained a few pounds above my goal weight.

I am not preoccupied with weighing. I weigh in the morning, and don't think about it for the rest of the day. If I'm away from home, I don't weigh, and I don't miss it or worry about it.

This is a good explanation of why I weighed daily.

 I weigh in daily too.  I keep a graph and that allows me to see where I'm at.  I'm still losing, but I see me doing it permanently so that I can keep the weight off.  I recognize daily fluctuations as well and don't freak out if I gained 2.5 pounds from the day before esp if it's TTOM!! 

If you're the type who's gonna be "OMG I GAINED A HALF A POUND FROM YESTERDAY", then do NOT weigh yourself everyday.  But if you can see it for what it is... tracking over the long term, then by all means do it.

I weigh in daily as well. I found when i waited one day a week there was so much pressure around the weigh in, and it would seriously affect my eating, if i was up i would freak out and if i was down i would over celebrate by eating treats. Thats what it did for me, now when i weight every day i understand my weight fluctuates daily and it doesnt bug me but i can deff. see an overall trend in loss. So for me the scale doesnt make me freak out as much any more.

I step on the scale every 2 or 3 days. I know for myself if I did it everyday it would turn into an obsession. Forcing myself to wait the 2 or 3 days is just better for me.

I'm trying to weigh in once every 2 weeks.

I know, really far apart. But I can't handle weighing daily or even every second or third day. If there isn't movement on the scale I feel like a failure, and will overeat. I know if I weight myself every 2 weeks, I'm pretty much guaranteed to see at least some sort of movement on the scale. When I reach maintenance though, I'm going to weigh daily, because then I'll just be trying to stay in a 5lb range (with daily fluctuations).

I think it's about knowing yourself, and knowing how you're going to react to daily weigh-ins.  

I weigh in daily (actually, multiple times a day) but only record once a week.  I like to see the fluctuations.  It all depends on you, if you think you can deal with fluctuations and such.  Some people do just fine weighing every day, some people don't.

amethystgirl..That is a great link and explains why I always thought it was better to weigh everyday.  Everyone should read this.  The reason I'm back here trying to lose 50 lbs. is because I stopped getting weighed all together for a couple of years.  I had a lot of personnal stress in my life and put myself on hold.  Now I have to start all over again.  If I had kept getting weighed this would never have happened.  I had maintained my weight for years before that by weighing everyday.   But when you don't weigh, when your clothes start getting tight you just make an excuse and go on the way you have been, not wanting to face what is really happening.  Then you wake up one morning, come to your senses and get back on the scale to face the awful truth.  And all the while knowing that if you had just continued to weigh everyday this never would have gotten so bad.

If you can't bring yourself to weigh everyday while you're losing at least do yourself a huge favor and once you reach your goal please get weighed everyday.  Allow yourself a 3 lb. limit, if it goes up to that take a day or two of watching what you eat until it's back where you want it.  It's so, so much easier to lose 2 lbs then 20 or 30.

Amethystgirl:  Great link!  This explains so well why I weigh everyday. 

I am currently maintaining a 120 pound loss and trying to slowly lose another 5 pounds.

I also weigh in daily.  Additionally, I recalculate my BMI at least every week.  It's so empowering to see yourself getting closer and closer to a healthy BMI. 

I like seeing that not having that piece of cake turned out well, or seeing that that second slice of pizza didn't make me feel as good as losing weight does.  I bought a scale that measures in .2 lb increments, so even a small drop is noticable.  I like knowing the direct impact that my actions have - it keeps me in line.  I think if I had a week, I'd either not count as closely, or if I hadn't lost anything at weigh in, I'd feel like I had wasted a week and would be constantly trying to figure out where I went wrong.

I also set tons of small rewards for myself (NOT food).  Every 5 lbs I get a reward, every BMI point decrease I get a reward, every time the center digit in my weight changes, I get a reward.  They don't have to be anything big.  They can be a day of sitting around catching up on TV, a new blouse, going bowling, whatever.

If you are going to weigh daily, though, make sure you're always in the same condition each time, or you'll be fooling yourself.  I weigh first thing in the morning (you weigh less, so that's already a plus!), after using the restroom, while I'm inbetween getting out of my pajamas and into my clothes.  That way I limit as many outside factors as possible.

If you are interested in how much outside factors really have an effect, trying weighing yourself before bed and then when you wake up.  It's insane how much work your body does over night!  :)

I'm a bit of a hybrid.  I weight myself every day knowing that my weight can fluctuate for various reasons.  But, I have my official weight in day once a week.  For me it's the best of both worlds. If on my official weigh in day I'm up a little bit, but know my weight has been lower for most of the week I'm confident that I just hit a bloat day.  The number one thing I look at is my trend line overall going down.  

I bought a scale in March, after making some changes in my lifestyle to lose weight and get more fit in January.  I started by weighing once a week (just like WW back in my twenties), then switched to weighing once a day when I discovered a great spreadsheet in the Hacker's Diet that graphs your weight trend and calculates an average daily deficit based on the weight loss trend.  The calculations don't work if you don't weigh (almost) every day.  He also has a great explanation for why our weight fluctuates so dramatically from day to day.

To my amazement, I found daily weighing really reduced my psychic energy around my weight and my weigh-in.  It just became a small part of the day, like the weather or what I was in the mood to eat for breakfast.  Much less traumatic than my old weekly weigh-ins had been where if I didn't lose as much as I hoped I would agonize over every little thing I might have done wrong the previous week.  I just weigh, write it down, and enter it in the spreadsheet at the end of the month where I really get rewarded by seeing a great graph with a steady downward trend.

Original Post by vcarrie:

I'm a bit of a hybrid.  I weight myself every day knowing that my weight can fluctuate for various reasons.  But, I have my official weight in day once a week.  For me it's the best of both worlds. If on my official weigh in day I'm up a little bit, but know my weight has been lower for most of the week I'm confident that I just hit a bloat day.  The number one thing I look at is my trend line overall going down.  

 That's me exactly as well.  I like the daily check-in but I only record it once a week. 

Hi, I'm with everyone else.  I weigh myself every morning.  I do have an official weigh-in every Monday for myself.  Over the summer, I didn't bother weighing or excersing so I gained the 10 pounds back that I had spent 7 months losing.  I make sure that I walk at least 30-60 minutes on the treadmill every morning now.  Good luck.

I just wanted to chime in on my experience with daily weigh ins.  I used to weigh in every day and I would absolutely FRET over daily fluctuations.  I was eating only 1200 calories per day and exercising 90 minutes per day.  I did this for over 18 months.

It got to the point where I would weigh in multiple times per day.  Depending on how I felt about what the scale said, I would either eat or not eat.  I am 5'3" and I weigh 125...or I did a month ago.  I had to stop weighing myself because if I fluctuated up to the 130 range...I would stop eating.  I now have no idea what I weigh, but I still exercise for 90 minutes daily and have upped my calories to 1600. 

Long story short, if you can use the weigh-ins in a reasonable way, then go for it; weigh yourself daily.  If you start to use it as a torture device, stop the daily weigh-ins.

I guess it's a personal preference, for me i just weigh myself every 5-7 days. I do this because i like to know if what i ate in those days has affected my weight loss. I also get frustrated with how my weight fluctuates up to 3-4 pounds through out the day. I've been doing this since end of july and have lost 31 pounds +. So i always feel confident at weigh in b/c for me is 98% always a lower number than the last time i weighed myself. So i feel if you need a self esteem boaster weigh in once a week, and if you gained weight go back and check what you ate when you went over on calories and/or the variety of food in your diet.

I weigh daily and actually find it to be enlightening. Yes, our weight fluctuates, but by weighing in I could get a better handle on which foods made me retain more than others. I don't believe that daily fluctuations are reflective of fat gains - as I think those would come more slowly, just as fat loss comes more slowly. But trends are just as important.

The only time I stopped weighing daily when was I was at my heaviest and just couldn't face what I was going to see on the scale. I still don't know, to this day, what my weight actually was when I started using CC. I guessed, and then added a few pounds!

I too weigh daily (sometimes more than once, out of curiosity about fluctuation through the day), but only record once a week. Friday morning, bare naked! lol

i try to weigh daily - i have a roommate though and i'm trying to lose weight in secret (it's better for my mental health to do it this way) so I have to keep the scale in my room and carry it into the bathroom - some days I don't do it bc of the rush in the morning with the two of us trying to run in and out. I really prefer to do it daily though.

(I'd weigh in my room but it's carpeted)

I found that I need do it nearly daily. First, to just be realistic about where I am at any given point and be comfortable with fluctuations - - I don't 'lose' 3 pounds overnight, nor do I gain it. I want to make this a life long habit instead of falling into old practices of avoiding the scale after a bad week...weekend...month...that then turns into a much longer time.

When I was a larger size, I learned the hard way that you can't go by your clothes - -the larger clothes have much larger weight range allowances. I didn't get on a scale for a year, and thought I had only gained about 5 pounds b/c my pants were just starting to get tight - -surprise - it was really 20.