Weighing Frequency

The weight of your body seems to be the most common way of tracking your weight. If you are going to track it in this way then you have the dilemma of how often you will weigh yourself. I do it every day but my wife does it once a week. I recommend weighing yourself every day because you will have motivation every day to continue improving your body. Every day you should weigh yourself in the morning, after you pee just after rising and before you get dressed or eat/drink anything. This will ensure consistency with your weighing and will ensure that you won't register as weighting more because you've drunk water and eaten food that morning.

Some sources site reasons for not weighing every day such as fluctuations in weight can be demoralising. However, if you know why these fluctuations occur, then you are more likely to be encouraged by your overall results.

Fluctuations can occur for a number of reasons. The biggest one is water retention. During a recent hot period at home, my weight fluctuated wildly:
2012-05-23 234.0
2012-05-24 236.8
2012-05-25 233.6
2012-05-26 236.2
2012-05-27 232.8

As you can see, my weight went up by nearly 3lb then down by 3lb then up by 3lb again and then down by 4lb. This is due to not being used to drinking enough water to keep up with my extra fluid loss. I could tell because my pee was dark yellow, a classic sign of dehydration.

Here's how I think my water drinking affected my weight:
2012-05-23 234.0 starting weight for this segment.
2012-05-24 236.8 +2.8lb kind of fluctuation I get every few days
2012-05-25 233.6 -3.2lb loss in fluids due to not drinking enough previous day in hot weather
2012-05-26 236.2 +2.6lb because of dehydration 2 days ago, my body kept as much water as it could yesterday, hence my weight gain
2012-05-27 232.8 -3.4lb loss of water due to not drinking enough previous day


Here's an example of how weekly weighing can be misleading:

Weekly weigh
Week 1 : 234.5lb
Week 2 : 233.0lb
This shows a loss of only 1.5 lb but you may actually have a loss of 4.5lb of fat and are carrying 3lbs of extra water.

Daily weigh
Week 1
Day 1 : 234.5lb
Day 2 : 233.3lb
Day 3 : 233.5lb
Day 4 : 231.8lb
Day 5 : 230.1lb
Day 6 : 229.5lb
Day 7 : 229.1lb
Week 2
Day 8 : 233.0lb

This shows that you were losing fat through the week but may have excess water when you did the weekly weigh. For me this a much more encouraging method of tracking your fat loss.

Other things that can also affect your fluctuations are:

Salt - a slight increase can cause you to retain water, thus increasing your weight
Water - drinking more water can make you seem to gain initially but then it will soon drop once your body becomes accustomed to your new intake amount
Vegetables - increasing the amount of vegetables you eat will have a similar effect to drinking more water because 80-90% of fruits and vegetables is water.

Personally, I write down my weight daily on a sheet of paper and then plot it onto a graph that is on my kitchen cupboard. I find it easier to see the fat loss in the general direction of the line than in the numbers themselves. I can also see visually how close I am to my goals I set.

Women, remember that you will weigh more in the days leading up to the start of your menstrual cycle as your body will retain a lot more water. Keep this in mind and don't be discouraged.