

Daily Weigh-In May Help Dieters Lose - chegra84
http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20051118/daily-weigh-in-may-help-dieters-lose

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omarchowdhury
I can confirm this. I weighed myself every morning since the end of December
09 and I have dropped 53.2 pounds (240 lb to 186.8 lb).

Obviously the weighing in didn't make me the lose the weight, it was the
reinforcement and the notice of a gradual change (or gradual increase day-
over-day) that kept me going with my new eating habits.

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mmastrac
This is one of the tips espoused by the Hacker's Diet. I used this more than a
decade ago to drop 20lbs:

<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html>

The concept should be familiar to those in startup land, though: "You Can't
Improve What You Don't Measure"

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ekanes
Since your day-to-day weight fluctuates, daily weighing wouldn't show you
accurate day-to-day improvements properly. My guess is that weighing yourself
daily is more about staying focused and engaged; you're constantly checking-in
with what you're doing, and more likely to think about it and stick with it.

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joshstaiger
The Hacker's Diet accounts for this by encouraging you to look at a moving
average of your daily weight, rather than the number itself:

<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/signalnoise.html#Fa73>

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3fiddyz
Weight lose is super simple, I am down 25kg since Jan 2010 following the
primal blueprint guidelines: <http://www.marksdailyapple.com>

No gimmicks, no hours of pounding the pavement, no stupid exercise machines,
no processed crap food, just eat the right healthy and natural foods and your
body will naturally drop down to the right body fat percentage. Plus I can eat
heaps of bacon and steak and not feel guilty about it anymore.

This video is fantastic, well worth the 90 minutes to watch it, explains in
detail what happens to carbs in your body:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&feature=player_embedded)

This is a fantastic movie also, highly recommend you get a copy:
<http://www.fathead-movie.com>

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rosshudgens
This is pretty obvious to me, made complicated by people who want super
answers or miracle get rich quicks or anything like that. If you see your
weight every day and seeing it going up, you eat less. If you see it going
down, you get motivated and stay on the same track.

"I lost 20 pounds...How? I drank bear piss and took up fencing. How the fuck
you think, son? I exercised."

~~~
carbocation
People will probably bite back saying that exercise doesn't correlate with
weight loss. That is true, but less important than the ultimate result:
_persistent weight loss_. And exercise corresponds damned well with persistent
weight loss. Cheers!

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Evgeny
As a personal anecdote, daily weigh-in was crucial for my (rather humble)
weight loss - from 82 to 75 kg in about 12 weeks. I would weigh myself in at
the same time - in the morning, before taking in any food or drink, but after
taking care of the bodily needs. I never had the need to count the calories,
so I have absolutely no idea what my calorie intake was while losing weight
compared to normal diet. I do, however, keep a fairly consistent eating
regime. So, the daily weigh in results were just used to adjust the size of
portions a little bit here and there. It definitely helped.

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johnswamps
I have no idea if it works or not, but I want to point out two things. 1: It
seems that this is a correlation study rather than a causality study. 2: Your
weight can fluctuate on a day to day basis, especially depending on what
you've eaten recently, how much water you've drank, the time of day, whether
you've gone to the bathroom, etc. The overall trend over a larger period of
time is what's important. Still, this 2nd argument may be irrelevant if the
point is just to keep you motivated rather than to track your weight.

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char
Yes, but if you keep track of it, you learn how much weight a glass of water
adds, for example, and you can calibrate for that. I'd say you learn more
about how to control your weight in the long run if you keep track of these
daily fluctuations.

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johnswamps
But these fluctuations are often just noise. Having a glass of water before
you step on the scale isn't going to help you lose or gain weight, but it
still shows up on the scale. You're just micro-managing things that don't
matter on this point. And then are just some things you can't control. If you
have bowel movements at the same time every day, then that's not an issue; but
if you go at different times every day (or not even every day), you might
register as having gained two pounds one morning, when in fact you ate at a
caloric deficit the day before.

But if you are going to weigh yourself every morning, keep this in mind and
try to keep the exact same conditions every morning. Do it at the same time
every day, either eat breakfast before weighing yourself every time or after
every time, etc., otherwise you'll be worrying about changes in weight that
don't mean anything.

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ebiester
The excel graph will take into account those little things. As long as the
direction continues downward, the daily numbers don't matter.

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jamesbritt
When I was actively trying to lose weight, I was checking it every day. What I
found was that I might lose a pound every day or so, then next day I'm up 3
pounds. But over time I was noticing a new, lower, upper limit to the down/up
cycle.

At first it was 205, then 200, then 197, and now I'm surprised if I go over
180.

Yeah, checking it helped me keep u running and not eating crap, because it
gave me some sense of accomplishment and further motivation.

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petercooper
What gets measured gets done.

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char
This definitely works for me. I weigh myself each morning and night. I
frequently weigh myself after drinking x glasses of water or eating a meal.
Sometimes I'll even weigh myself hourly to learn how quickly I'm burning
energy. After a few years, I've gotten a really good idea of what (and how
much) I should be eating to lose or maintain my weight.

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jadence
Weighing yourself hourly to see how quickly you're burning energy is
misguiding. When you burn carbs/fat you're not expelling them from the body.
You're converting them to another form in a process that releases energy that
your body can use. E=mc^2 considerations aside, as you wouldn't be able to
detect those differences anyway, your weight is still the same. The waste
products later get expelled when you go to the bathroom, sweat, etc.

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jonah
I'm traveling through the US South this week and the Publix grocery stores
have scales in the entryways. (I assume for this purpose.) Great idea.

