Weighing yourself daily can tip the scale in your favor

I usually weight myself daily. I don't record the results, but I notice if I'm going up or down or staying the same from recent days, which helps me adjust my eating. If I gain a few pounds, it motivates me to eat less that day.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/cu-wyd061715.php

Public Release: 17-Jun-2015
Weighing yourself daily can tip the scale in your favor

Cornell University

For those wishing to lose weight and keep it off, here's a simple strategy that works: step on a scale each day and track the results.

A two-year Cornell study, recently published in the Journal of Obesity, found that frequent self-weighing and tracking results on a chart were effective for both losing weight and keeping it off, especially for men.

Subjects who lost weight the first year in the program were able to maintain that lost weight throughout the second year. This is important because studies show that about 40 percent of weight lost with any dietary treatment is regained in one year, and almost 100 percent of weight loss is regained at the end of five years.

"You just need a bathroom scale and an excel spreadsheet or even a piece of graph paper," said David Levitsky, professor of nutrition and psychology at Cornell and the paper's senior author.

The method "forces you to be aware of the connection between your eating and your weight," said Levitsky. "It used to be taught that you shouldn't weigh yourself daily, and this is just the reverse."

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