How Often Should I Weigh?

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By Rich Weil, M.Ed., CDE

Transformation Weight Control

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Here’s what to consider.

    1. Your weight will fluctuate from morning to night, and from day to day. This is a given. In our program, the fluctuation from morning to night was an average of 4.7 pounds.
    2. Weight fluctuates for many reasons from day to day.
    3. You may have eaten a lot of salty food (extra sodium), or extra carbohydrates, the day before your weigh-in. Both sodium and carbs retain fluid in the cells, and fluid is heavy (a liter of water weighs about 2.25 pounds).
    4. You may be taking a medication that causes weight gain. Opiates, anti-inflammatories, anti-histamines, insulin, and some mood stabilizers, can cause rapid weight gain.
    5. Some medications can cause weight loss. Diuretics for control of blood pressure, for instance, can cause you to lose excess fluid. This will cause you to weigh less.
    6. Medical history. For example, if you have heart failure, your weight could fluctuate as much as 12 pounds from one day to the next.
    7. Menopause can cause all sorts of shifts in weight.
    8. The stage of your menstrual cycle can change your weight from day to day, sometimes as much as 3-5 pounds. High progesterone levels can cause fluid retention.
    9. If you exercised very hard, especially weight lifting, several times a week, and especially if you haven’t been exercising, then the breakdown of muscle tissue will cause excess fluid and other substrate to collect in the muscle, causing weekly weight gain. I’ve seen many, many times over the years where an individual exercises five times a week, and especially if it’s resistance exercise, and the scale goes up. But having more muscle, rather than less, even if it causes the scale to go up, will, in the long run, serve you well, because it will raise your metabolic rate, strengthen your muscles and bones, increase your longevity, improve self-esteem, and many other health benefits. And over time, as the muscle heals, and grows, the excess fluid will be flushed out.
    10. There are many other reasons that cause your weight to fluctuate, and sometimes it’s not always possible to determine what the cause is.

With all of this said, here’s the problem if you weigh only once a week. You may not get an accurate reading. Any one of the factors above could cause a swing in your weight, and it’s possible that the day before your weigh-in, you weighed less than on weigh-in day. If you only weigh once a week, then you won’t detect patterns and you are subject to random fluctuations in weight, thus you may not get an accurate weight.

Research hasn’t proven the optimal number of times to weigh in a week, but we recommend at minimum three. First, it will help you stay focused if you’re prone to losing your focus, and perhaps more important, the more you weigh the more likely you are to detect patterns in your weight fluctuations and find out your true weight. We have clients who weigh every day, and with that they can detect the fluctuation pattern, and more important, they will consider the lowest weight during the week their truest weight. And over the long-run, months, and even years, this strategy will give you the best indication of what your true weight is independent of all the fluctuations.

There is one caveat to all of this. If it is going to absolutely drive you crazy to see the day-to-day fluctuations of your weight, and you can deal with the occasional inaccurate data that the scale occasionally shows, then by all means keep your weighing frequency to a minimum. Just understand the limitations and then you will be fine.

I like to conclude discussions about body weight and the scale with the following:

  1. Your weight does not define you.
  2. Weight fluctuates from day to day, as much as 3-4 pounds.
  3. The scale is not always the best indicator of your behavior. We’ve all had that “good” week where we remained on our food and exercise plan and yet still, we gain weight, and other times we were off plan yet still we lost weight.
  4. The scale can be notoriously fickle, and sometimes just a downright liar, a random number generator, so although weight is a primary outcome for many, keep in mind that the scale is fallible, and not always the best indicator of your behavior. So sometimes taking the long view (months, or even more), the passage of time will absorb any errors and fluctuations of the scale, and then you’ll know how you are truly doing with your weight.

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