How often should you weigh yourself?

There is a lot said about how often you should weigh yourself when you are on your weight loss /fitness journey, some people believe in weighing everyday (same time), some people weigh themselves once a week (fixed day and time), some people weigh themselves after they finish a specific workout plan, there are a few who don’t believe in the scale and then there are a few who weigh themselves a few times in a day.

So many different points of view can get confusing, how do you decide??? I think just like each one of us has a different fitness journey, each one of us will have a different answer to how often you should weigh yourself and how important the number you see on the scale is.

Overtime I have realized the best way to decide how often you should be weighing yourself depends a lot on how the weighing machine makes you feel. The main reason we get a weighing machine is to see how we are progressing so if seeing a number is in any way hindering your progress stop weighing yourself as often

Now you must be thinking how can a weighing machine hinder your progress???? It’s simply how you react to a weighing machine decides if a weighing machine is going to help you or pull you back in your fitness journey. 

I decide this by simply asking myself : What happens when expectations are not met?

(By expectations not met I mean – maybe I don’t see the loss I was expecting or maybe I see no loss or worst I see a gain all this when I have been working out and eating as planned)

• Sometimes you don’t care:  You just note down the weight and go on with your life, you go for your workout with your usual enthusiasm 
• Sometimes you get upset:  you go through your workouts and your food just to make sure you are on track and if you find you have slipped you go back to your routine and are more cautious, there are times when going realize you haven’t slipped then you change your routine and push harder because you know hard work will get you closer to your goal 
• Sometimes you get angry: you complain about all the effort not paying off, you cry over how other people lose faster but then after all the complaining you still go back to your routine
• Finally sometimes you are both upset and angry: This is when you go and hide under your blanket instead of working out. This being the one scenario which noticeably makes you go off track but this happens after many days of being upset (many days when the scale did not show the number you were expecting). Basically you go in a negative mind space and that’s the one thing that can hold anybody back.

All this happens when expectations are not met but What happens when expectations are met?

• Sometimes you don’t care: you just note down the weight and go on with your life, you go for your workout with your usual enthusiasm 
• Sometimes you get happy: you have a jump in your step and  go to the gym with a big smile and workout smiling all the time and push harder because you know hard work is taking you closer to your goal 
• Sometimes you get very happy and relax: You start feeling you can finally take a break and instead of pushing harder you either skip a workout or go but don’t put in the usual amount of effort. A gain this usually happens after many days of being happy with the scale.

So my conclusion is if I get too depended on the number displayed on the scale it affects me badly.  The minute you start to believe your weight is the only way to decide if you are getting fitter I believe you are on a downward slope. 

The scale is one of the tools that should be used just to track a progress nothing more, It is only one of the tools not the only tool available.

I have changed my decision so many times; overtime I have changed from being very scale depended to keeping the scale as one of the ways I make sure I am on track. I was somebody who weighed myself daily, there were days when I weighed myself more than once in a day and then I started weighing myself twice a week, then moved to once a week, finally now I have reached a point where I randomly check my weight because it is not the only way I measure my progress. I base my progress on many different things; this also keeps changing sometimes I base it on my strength, sometimes on my speed and sometimes on distance or ability to do advanced forms of exercises.

What do you think? How often do you weigh yourself? and how much does that number really affect you?

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Tanvee