Is Regular Self-Weighing Necessary or Important?

Should you weigh yourself regularly on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?

As I mentioned in the last piece on logging calories, a focus on weight and weighing implies that you believe your weight is a fundamentally important number in your quest to live long, healthy…a concept that does not hold water if you are otherwise healthy and not morbidly obese [1]. Unfortunately, in our weight and looks obsessed society, external appearances have become the paramount indicators of how healthy you believe you are and are likely to be perceived to be.

If your weight is important to you as a number, then it becomes logical that you weigh yourself on a regular basis. It is only when you know what you weigh and whether that weight is stable or not, will you be able to take measures to keep that weight within a specific range, as many studies have shown [2].  Simply put, those who weigh themselves regularly are better able to manage their weight.

So the answer to the question I posed at the beginning is…no. However, if your self-worth and self-esteem are tied to your weight, then please weigh yourself regularly.

In that case, how often should you check your weight? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Daily self-weighing can be misleading because of naturally occurring daily variations in your weight. It could potentially cause anxiety especially when there is a mismatch between your perception of what you should weigh based on how much you have eaten and/or worked out, and the actual weight shown on the scale. Monthly self-weighing could make you miss changes in weight that you might want to address sooner. The ideal therefore, is a weekly schedule, which evens out daily variations but still allows you to course correct within a reasonable time-frame, if needed.

The best way to do so is at the same time every week, in the same way, using the same weighing machine. This may be after a bath, without clothes on, in the morning, etc.

I used to weigh myself daily many years ago, when I was obsessed with my weight. I learnt quickly that there was no correlation between what I ate and my runs and my workouts and my weight when I checked daily. I then switched to a weekly schedule, which worked better. Over the last few years, I have stopped weighing myself regularly. I check my weight once in a while, just to reconfirm that it aligns with what I believe my weight should be, but I know my body well enough that I can make out if my trousers are getting tight or loose.

In short, you don’t need to weigh yourself on a regular basis, unless you are morbidly obese, in which case, it becomes a clinical problem to be treated. For most of us who fall within a reasonably normal range, our weight is just one small part of what it takes to live long, healthy, the atmasvasth way. If you still believe that your weight is an important part of your physical and mental well-being, then weekly weighing in the same manner, at the same time, once a week is good enough.

Footnotes

1. Flegal KM et aI. Association of all-cause mortality with overweight and obesity using standard body mass index categories: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA. 2013 Jan 2;309(1):71-82.

2. Zheng Y, Klem ML, Sereika SM, Danford CA, Ewing LJ, Burke LE. Self-weighing in weight management: a systematic literature review. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2015 Feb;23(2):256-65. doi: 10.1002/oby.20946. Epub 2014 Dec 17. PMID: 25521523.