I know that everyone who has kicked themselves in the butt and jumped on the LCL wagon is anxious when it comes to their weight loss, but don't keep checking the scale everyday!

Let me tell you something... you may think that seeing a 1/4 pound here or a 1/2 there everyday will make you feel better, but what about those days when you are carrying water weight and the scale goes up a little? Those "gain" moments are really bad for the psyche when it comes to dieting. If you are really doing this as a lifestyle change, and it's hard for you to stay away from the scale... I suggest once a week(or every two weeks or month.. depending on your self control). Trust me.. it will help in the long run for your mental health~!

MeganRose LC WOL since 2 JAN 2004
(fell of the wagon for a few days but I'm back!)
240/225/145
80 lbs to go!
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" -Confucious

"The dawn of a new day must only come after the ending of the final setting sun the night before."

MeganRose, I TOTALLY know what you mean. This is my first week of not weighing everyday, and while it is about to kill me, I know my mind is much better to see 1 lb at the end of the week than -.5, +.2, -.3, etc
thanks for the encouragement!

Heather
181/158.4/140
atkins 8/5/03 (off Thanksgiving 2003-Jan 12, 04)

I totally agree Iron. I have to have my husband hide the scale from me. I'm serious he actually hides it. Otherwise I become obsessed and get frustrated. He gets it out for me every Sunday so I can weigh in.

Good luck all!!
Seesko


starting date 1/5/04

242/234/135

"What my mind can envision; my body can master!"

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by IronSquirrel150:
Let me tell you something... you may think that seeing a 1/4 pound here or a 1/2 there everyday will make you feel better, but what about those days when you are carrying water weight and the scale goes up a little? Those "gain" moments are really bad for the psyche when it comes to dieting.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


I have a slightly different perspective on this. In the beginning I weighed myself only once a week. That was fine for then. As time has progressed I find that I have begun to weigh myself daily. Although I still have an official 'weigh in' day and this is the weight I record.

The daily 'weigh ins' offer me insight and immediate feedback on what is happening with my body (i.e. water retention, TOM cycles). I understand better what happens to my body each month with this approach. For example, and this may be way too much information for some , I tend to retain water when I ovulate and not when TOM is coming. Also I can think of a number of times when my official weigh in day showed my weight higher than the previous days. If I was weighing myself only weekly then I would have been discouraged by that number. There are no guarantees that the official weekly weight is actually your lowest of the week. Does that make sense??

I think this is a very individual thing. Some people find weighing themselves daily frustrating and obsessive. I prefer to do it to keep tabs on things. As they say YMMV!

Started Atkins 10/27/03
182/152/142

i agree. while for some weighing every day might be a little much, i think that for others it can give feedback on how the body is working. It doesnt hurt as long as you take an educational approach, without expecting a decrease every single day.

Sarah
159/148/135

I follow the CALP eating plan. They recommend weighing every day and then doing a weeekly average. The weekly average helps to keep things in perspective and takes all the fluctuations into account.

I like this method and actually take it a step further. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I enter my daily weight in and it calculates my 7-day average. It also charts both my actual and 7-day avg. Works well for me.

Believe it or not, I weigh myself every day even when I'm off my EP (eating plan) for a bit. Helps to keep me focused and know that I need to get back on.

Debby



206.5/159.5/140?130?
CALP 1/12-10/9/03 & 11/26/03 on
(Atkins 10/10-11/25/03)

Hi,

I weigh myself everyday and record it on fitday.com. It keeps a running record and creates a graph to see the results.

I admit that weighing everyday may be frustrating, but I want to see what is happening daily to my body.

Also, I read a study about people who had kept the weight off so many years after dieting. They had five things in common. I remember two of them....they all thought of their eating changes as a way of life not a diet, and they weighed daily. (It did not state if they did this after the weight loss or the whole time)

Anyways.....so far this is the way I am opting for....

Peace, Joanna
Atkins since 12/3/03
299/269/130

I prefer the weigh daily with 1 official weigh day.. I weigh myself officially on Mondays (to help the Mondayitis thing of going back to work after the weekend), and measure myself fortnightly on Sundays.
I would rather pick an upwards pattern quickly. At the moment I'm just static...

The Cantab from the land of the Hobbits...
188/175/145 - target June 2004.

I broke my scale a long ways back, so it's pretty simple for me now. I'm actually glad I don't have a scale anymore.

I get weighed at every doctor's visit. That's about every three months. My next weigh-in will be next week.

I've lost a LOT of weight dieting. I just haven't lost it all at the same time, unfortunately! I'm just guessing, but I must have lost about 500 pounds through dieting. The most I ever lost at one time was about 112 pounds during 11 months of some sloppy low-carbing combined with calorie-counting. I gained some of that back, then lost it again, then wobbled up and down for another five years, then gained some back and said, "Oh to hell with this!" and stopped worrying about my weight for several years. And then I got back on the low-carb roller coaster when I resumed college, lost many pounds, gained it back, lost some more, graduated, gained it back around 9/11.

The latest round of low-carbing began about 14 months ago. At the 11-month mark, I'd lost 57 pounds. I'm grateful about that slower loss, because I'm not trying to be competitive or prove a point about it anymore. This time is for keeps.

I'm very grateful that my scale croaked. If it hadn't, I probably would weigh myself obsessively, as I used to do, and drive myself nuts second guessing everything I eat. It just leads to more and more obsession about food, which is what I just don't want to do anymore. Even more than losing weight, I don't want to have to obsess about food.

Instead, I obsess about my Ketostix. I measure my ketones every day. This is how I judge the success of my program. I consider this better feedback than the scale, because it tells me that I'm doing this WOE AS WELL AS I POSSIBLY CAN.

I don't have to worry about stalls, little bumps upward, water weight gains or losses, constipation, how much I had to eat last night, etc. None of that stuff really matters at all. It's just dross.

Investors have a number of different stock market investment strategies. One of the most successful, but the hardest to practice, for psychological reasons, is called "Buy and Hold." Financial consultants will gladly dole out this advice to new investors. Just buy a mutual fund and hold onto it until you retire! Sadly, that goes against human nature, as statistics boldly confirm. People get into a mutual fund and they watch the market every day, they sweat, they hear news that makes them worry, and they end up selling out at the time when things look the hairiest, which is, strangely enough, almost always the best time to BUY, not SELL.

Well, as far as my WOE goes, I'm on a buy and hold strategy. Watching the hourly ticker would just drive me nuts and erode my confidence. So I stick to something simpler that I can handle, and that is, knowing that I'm in ketosis. It means I'm doing things as well as I can.

**************
"Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door."

You made my day with the comparison between stocks and losing weight! I have to say though... stocks you want to go up and want weight to go down... guess it's an inverse relation!

MeganRose LC WOL restart 1/25/04
240/224/145
79 lbs to go! Only checking the scale once a week.. can't wait for saturday!
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" -Confucious

Awesome post, Doc! I like the comparison with the stock market.

I actually use a little program called "Weight Commander." I weigh daily and enter my weight. The program shows a chart with my actual weights and then the floating 7 day average (very much like your home-made program, Debbie). It also provides information about average weight lost since beginning the weight loss program, has space to enter journal information, and is very easy to use. I'm not trying to sell the program... I just found it easy to use (and doesn't require an internet connection).

So, I satiate my obsessive tendencies by weighing every day, but keep some perspective by watching my 7 day average.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Regardless of frequency of weigh-ins, people definitely need to do measurements regularly, too. That's where the real success is measured!

Cheers!
Julie

Atkins - 2nd time around

Started 1/19/04
176/169/145

I tried the weighing every week at first and some weeks would show no loss. If you weigh yourself on one of those water retaining days, you get an inacurate indication of your loss. I weigh every day now but I do not get frazzled over 1-2 pounds as long as the trend is downward. I can rationalize a 1-2 pound difference in a day by remembering that I didn't eat 3500 or 7000 calories more than usual in the last 24 hours.

Just goes to show that we all utilize different methods to achieve similar goals.

Red
7/24/02
186/108/110
Size 16W to size 2

I do the weigh every day Excel spreadsheet thing too. I also change the numbers to red instead of black when. . . well, you know when. I have learned quite a bit about how my cycle and my weight correspond. I think this knowledge helps me avoid panic. I know now that I will get stallish around a week and a half before I'm expecting TOM, and I will drop 2-3 pounds about 3 days in. I think being aware of your body's patterns can only be a help to your efforts. Knowledge is power!

Stacie
222/158/145-50

I weigh myself daily. It helps me identify things that might cause a bloat, it helps motivate me when the scale goes down, and keeps me from a surprise weight gain that I wasn't aware of when I didn't weigh often enough.

I have an official WI on Tuesdays at WW. I also record my weight and measurements on Saturdays, as that is the day I started this 6-Week Body Makeover.

Ilse

380/304.6(WW)/221(current)/154
5'7"
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible"
Walt Disney


This is what a kokle actually looks like
(pronounced "kwok-l-eh)

I also weigh myself every morning, it keeps me going, and keeps me good during the day. I do the excel spreadsheet thing w/ measurements, I do measurements about once a week or so. Those are so tricky, hard to know if they're accurate or not. I even went as far as to buy another analog scale because I didn't trust my digital one, they both register the same weight !! OOPS!

216?/201/170?
started 1/1/04
mini goal: under 200 lbs