How often do you weigh?
Do you weigh more often (daily) for the knowledge?
Do you do it weekly to get an average?
Do you avoid the scale to avoid bad new that might discourage you?
I find it mostly psychological, but knowing that, allows you to take the “bad” news and blend it with the good.
Thoughts?
I was weighing nearly every morning but have since stopped. Too much change between water and food, going to start weighing only once a week. Looking at my progress on my phone I’m steadily losing about 5 pounds a month with just eating 500 less calories.
Gender plays a part of this answer.
For females we need to compare our weight to the same time of our previous cycle. Our weight fluctuates soooo much that comparing wk 1 to wk 2 could be dreadful. Where as comparing wk 1 the cycle to wk 1 last cycle is more accurate.
For males where there isn’t this massive fluctuation you can get away with weekly weigh ins.
I’d suggest weekly over monthly or daily. Daily starts to consume you. Monthly is too far apart to get the correct data from taking your weight.
Remember, your weight is just 1 aspect of data in this game.
I am in the same debate since I started. I weighed myself morning and evening to get a “worst case” average for the day, but I quickly learned that is too toxic for me.
Being a numbers nerd I am weighing myself every morning, but daily fluctuations deliver bad news here and there and that can be discouraging.
My doctor recommended once a week tops, in the morning when I am fasted and have gone to the bathroom. I found that way too optimistic but she might have seen through me and knew already that maybe that would be the best way for keeping me happy and motivated.
I’d say weigh in your own mental struggles and make a decision based on that. Try a week of measuring yourself more times, and if that is not making you happy, switch to once a week only. I have read many different posts about this on this thread and majority of what I have seen was once a week, so it doesn’t get overwhelming.
I hope this helps! Good luck on your journey!
Hello, I think I weigh myself once a week or so, maybe even less, those fluctuations even if normal and expected would drive me insane. It’s been good like that. I do take measurements every 3 weeks though or monthly, that’s where I can see progress more!
I weigh in every Monday morning when i wake up and after i go to the bathroom. I take a progress picture and test my blood for my BKI. I use the Simple app and you can enter the picture and the weight and then compare them. It’s nice to have a specific day that I do it and that I don’t think about it much other than that. It’s useful to have numbers and pictures. It has helped me figure out what my ideal weight is and where I feel most comfortable in my body.
I weigh myself each am before eating or drinking and it seems helpful. It’s pretty consistant and I can even tell if I need more electrolytes when fasting. If I even look during the day it’s all over the map and confuses me.
I do not own a scale. I am doing IF to help me “feel” better and not for a particular number. I am not a number - I know this, we all know this, but we all get to define what success looks like for ourselves. I have to get weighed at the doctor office and that’s enough for me.
I wiegh my self when I feels like it. When my weight is were I want it to be.
But the next 30 days, I will do that once a week, because I need to focus a little more on loosing some weight. So depends on where you are in your process.. Some want to know it everyday, some once a week. and some never, but mesure instead and look in the mirror.
I take photos, occasionally measure and go by how clothes fit and how wobbly I feel. Scales are not good for me! I’m actually in maintenance and not seeing the scale go down would be alarming I think! Seems like losing is easier mentally than keeping it off 😕
Twice a week!
I’ve averaged ~2 pounds a week weight loss.
I weigh myself Tuesday and Friday at the gym. I don’t have a scale at home. Usually I go down 1/2 to 1 pound each time I weigh myself :)
If I did it every day I think I’d drive myself insane. It’s too short of a time period to see ANY progress, and if you’re “up” from the day before, it can mess with your head
I weigh daily. It’s given me a good understanding of the fluctuations in water weight caused by salt, food transit times etc. I no longer panic when the scale goes up a little because I can usually understand why
(Keto since Feb 2021, started OMAD 2 weeks ago)I weigh and log every morning after peeing. Each Sunday I note the week’s total change, and every 11th I note the monthly change. I also note things like “vaca in Paris” or “company Xmas party” or “started OMAD” so in the future I can understand any obvious anomalies. I’ve learned not to stress out over small daily upticks — it’s definitely not a straight line.
Personally I like weighing once a week to get a snapshot of where I am.
I’m currently participating in a weight loss group that makes us weigh daily. I don’t like it because one day I will be 240, the next 239 and today 241. It makes me kind of batty. I know that most/all of the fluctuations is water but it still frustrates me.
Every morning. Using scanning Bluetooth scales. A lot of breakdown on fat/muscle/water/etc. having the details let’s me understand the daily fluctuations a little. I like having the feedback. Also using my watch to check my sleep quality. A feedback loop with slow feedback is hard to control.
I weigh myself every morning around the same time just to keep an eye on how my weight shifts from day to day. Hormones and menstrual cycles are something that I really need to keep in mind. But weight is just one of the things I keep track of.
I weigh every morning. I’m female, so I do see some crazy fluctuations, but it keeps me on track. I’m fasting not for weight loss but for health, so my goal is really to maintain, but I do see ups and downs despite keeping my fasting window (16/8) and calories constant.
It can be discouraging when the numbers go up, but I find the daily data helpful when I look back at trends across a few months.
Once a week, maybe once in two weeks. I do it when I know I have been a good boy. When I fall off the wagon, I come back, do the right thing, and then after a few days, weigh. Also depends if I have had a cheat meal that involves alcohol. Lots of it. That takes time to go out of the system. So I wait longer to weigh after that.
I like the turbulence of daily weigh-ins. For progress I only compare moving averages: simple weekly as long as I was losing steadily (> 1 kg/month), simple monthly once I started approaching maintenance (< 1 kg/month). Exponential or otherwise weighed / “biased” moving averages could be an option as well for less laggy feedback.
Nonetheless it’s fun looking at the daily change and trying to make sense of it. Why am I 2 kg heavier all of a sudden? Did I legitimately eat 14k kcal above my TDEE? Or did my metabolism decline by 90% overnight? Or was it the fourth plate of pasta or the sodium-rich fries? Are my legs still sore from that 20 km walk the other day? Where were my last few weigh-ins in the grander scheme of things – ahh they were below baseline because last week was just meat and veggies over and over, so that explains today’s spike’s grandiosity! And so on and so forth.
At the end of the day, isolated data points of course reveal little to nothing about progress, but may nonetheless, when combined with adjacent ones, help demystify the one or other plateau. Plenty of times as I was losing I e.g. weighed exactly the same on several consecutive Saturdays in a row, simply because each preceding Friday happened to have been carb-heavy. Had the weekly Saturday weigh-in been my sole piece of information, it would only be natural for me to be left worried that I’ve screwed up. But the luxury of data availability for the Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, … before reassures me that no, I’m not stuck, each week still features lower lows than the one before.
Weighing once a month on the same day. That way i know there will be progress. Weighing more often is discouraging for me, as the optimal 0,5 kg / week does not always show. But after a month, there is always something down. ;)