While this is often a personal decision, you may want to know about how often people tend to weigh and measure themselves. After all, you want to know that you are making progress and that what you are doing so far is working. Here are some things to keep in mind when deciding how often you should measure and weigh yourself while losing weight.
Daily Weigh-Ins
A common frequency of weighing in is every day, but you need to think about some things before choosing this option. First of all, if you weigh in daily, it needs to be at the same time and with the same amount of clothing on your body. Your weight fluctuates hourly, so if you weigh in at 7:00 am today, then 10:00 am tomorrow, it might appear as if you gained weight, but you really didn’t. This is one of the reasons weighing yourself this often is frowned upon. The fluctuations can throw off your progress and become really frustrating.
Weekly Weigh-Ins
A better option is to weigh yourself once a week or less often than that. With weekly weigh-ins, try to stick to the same day and weigh yourself around the same time. Keep in mind if you get a new scale, it may be a little different than your previous, so don’t count on that weight too much until you can compare a few weeks at a time. As always, it is better to do your weigh-ins in the morning before you eat or drink anything.
Monthly Weigh-Ins
With monthly weigh-ins, it takes longer to know what your progress is, but you have far less frustration during the month. If you weigh too often and you aren’t losing a lot of weight from day to day or each week, it can cause you to binge eat because you feel like what you have been doing isn’t working. This makes it hard to keep up with your weight loss routine. Monthly weigh-ins can help you to avoid this, but it also is sometimes hard waiting this long just to see how you are doing. This really is a personal decision you have to make for yourself.
Taking Measurements
Another way to measure your progress is by taking your measurements. For this, you need to use flexible fabric tape and measure areas like around your waist, your breasts, your hips, and around each arm and leg. This lets you know if you are losing inches, even if you aren’t losing pounds. You can measure weekly or monthly depending on your preference.
