How Often Should You Weigh Yourself When Trying to Lose Weight?

If there is one image that most people get when they think about dieting, it's the scale. For any of us who have tried, failed, or succeeded in losing weight, our scales have served as both our best friends, tracking our progress and our worst enemies, revealing slight gains in weight after all our hard work. Since losing weight will always be a stressful struggle, it's best to set up your entire weight loss plan in such a way that it gears you for success. And one aspect of setting yourself up for success is using the scale the right way. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Don't weigh yourself every day. Weighing yourself every single day is a bad idea for various reasons. For one, you may get easily discouraged when you see different readings from day-to-day, which can cause you to derail your diet and exercise plan. The truth is that our scale weight fluctuates from hour-to-hour based on fluid retention and other factors. Secondly, obsessive weighing is often linked to eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia. A study surveying middle and high school students found that girls who weigh themselves frequently often resorted to smoking, dieting pills, and laxatives to lose or maintain weight. Don't get caught in the trap of scale obsession! A good rule of thumb is to weigh yourself once a week.
2. Plateaus on the scale are normal. When you first begin your diet and exercise regimen, you may notice a significant drop in weight on the scale in the first few weeks or months. After that follows a plateau in which your scale's needle doesn't seem to budge. Remember that true weight loss—not just the shedding of fluids—is a long process that often takes at least a year or more.
3. Purchase an accurate scale. There's nothing more frustrating than stepping on the scale once and getting one reading, only to step on it a minute later and get substantially different number. If you are in the process of buying a new scale, or you are just thinking about updating your old one, don't agonize over the decision between analog or digital. Just get a scale that works—one that gives you the same reading four times in a row.
4. Weigh yourself under the same circumstances every time. As noted above, weighing yourself every day can potentially give you different readings, depending on what and in how much quantities you've eaten or drunk. Weighing yourself consistently every week at the same time of day, with or without your clothes or shoes on, is the best way to track if you've truly made progress in your weight loss goals.

Whether for good or ill, a scale is sometimes a necessary component for meeting your dieting goals. As long as you have a healthy mindset toward what you see on the scale, you should be successful in sticking to your dieting plan.

About the author: Angelita Williams writes on the topics of online courses.

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