How Often Should You Weigh Yourself Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Regardless of your specific goal, one of the easiest and most common ways of tracking your progress is by weighing and measuring yourself regularly. Weighing Yourself: Before you can decide when and how often you should weigh yourself, you first need to understand why your weight is simultaneously an important and useful measure of progress AND a confusing and deceptive number that often fails to tell you the whole story. Here’s what I mean… The Importance Of Weighing Yourself It shows if things are working. Fat and muscle both weigh something, which means that losing fat will typically cause a decrease in body weight and building muscle will typically cause an increase in body weight. Just knowing if your body weight is moving in the right direction for your goal, there’s also the issue of whether your body weight is moving at the ideal rate for your goal. You see, depending on your exact goal and a few other factors specific to you and your body, there is a certain rate of weight loss and weight gain that is considered optimal. So what’s the second best reason to weigh yourself regularly? To ensure that your body weight is changing at the speed it should be (not too slow, not too fast). A healthy weight loss is around 1 - 2lb of FAT per week. this all adds up! The Problems With just Weighing Yourself “Weight” is more than just fat or muscle. Your body weight can and very often does change as a result of a loss or gain in muscle, fat, water, glycogen, poop, food intake and more. That means daily fluctuations in body weight (plus extra monthly fluctuations for women) are extremely common and normal. And it’s this fact that causes 3 other problems… “Weight” alone tells us nothing about the composition of that weight. The number on the scale only allows you to track your weight… not the composition of that weight. And since most of us want to lose fat (but not muscle) and gain muscle (but not fat), the composition of the weight we lose or gain is often more important than anything else. That’s why most people should do more than just weigh themselves to monitor progress. For example… use measurements, body fat percentage, pictures, mirror and so on. Unrelated fluctuations in weight can slow your progress or lack thereof. Let’s say you’re trying to lose fat, but your weight stays the same. Did you fail to lose fat, or did you lose fat successfully but have that weight counterbalanced by a gain of something else? Some people just aren’t aware of the fact that it’s normal for their body weight to fluctuate, and this can easily cloud that person’s judgement about the effectiveness of their diet/workout and generally drive them insane. Even when you know there are other factors influencing your scale weight every day, just seeing that number fail to move (or move in the wrong direction) can still get into your head and lead to all sorts of problems (making unnecessary changes, depression, eating disorders, etc.). What Does All Of This Mean? It means that you should weigh yourself regularly because it’s a useful tool for tracking progress, but at the same time realize that the numbers you are seeing aren’t always an accurate representation of what your body is doing. And the reason you need to get your results to your coach to monitor and adjust your plan if needed, after all we are all different! Weighing Yourself Every Day weighing yourself every day is the LEAST accurate way because of those normal daily weight fluctuations I mentioned before Let me explain… If you weigh yourself every day and make decisions based on these day-to-day changes, then STOP. Because of all of that daily weight fluctuation stuff I keep talking about, this would be the worst way to do it. Some people will see the normal daily weight fluctuations I mentioned before and panic or feel depressed or make changes to their diet/workout that didn’t need to be made. . Weighing Yourself Once A Week Let’s say your once a week weigh-in happens to fall on a day when one of those normal weight fluctuations are taking place. Your progress (or lack thereof) is dishearting and you’d have to wait until a week later to know for sure . This is why we often recommend waiting 2-3 weeks before making any changes to your diet or workout based on what your body weight is doing. I’ve just personally seen/heard about way too many people obsessing over their weight and making stupid decisions and changing their diet or workout as a result of letting daily weight fluctuations affect their judgement. Not to mention, the potential for this to lead to negative thoughts, depression and full blown eating disorders definitely exists or even worst stop taking their plan. . Weighing Yourself Once A Month Let’s be honest here… in terms of monitoring progress, weighing yourself just once per month is pretty terrible and not recommended at all from an accuracy or tracking standpoint for obvious reasons. . Every Day Don’t let the daily fluctuations negatively affect you, if you are the type of person who will turn it into an unhealthy obsession and respond poorly to seeing typical day-to-day changes in your weight, then you should probably avoid this option. Once A Week In terms of a combination of accuracy and sanity, weighing yourself once per week is the best option for us all.But also measure!! Once A Month I don’t recommend this option at all. It’s not unusual to see as much as a 5-10lb shift in weight at different times throughout the day, which is why: A) weighing yourself at random times “just to see” is completely pointless and potentially dangerous (it will just drive you crazy), Ditch the diets let us show you a easy plan that will fit in your everyday life, and make the small changes to a new you, for life !
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 11:10:54 +0000
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