Return to: Tracking- Numbers

Daily Weighing

There is the saying, what gets measured get’s done.

Your body has certain measures that tell the story.  One of those is your weight.

Sure there could be variations.  Some of you may be bigger boned than others.  Some of you might have more of a huskier frame, while others have a slimmer frame.

Still, within reason, your weight is an accurate barometer.  That’s why we want to keep a close watch on this one. 

If you are like us, you probably went some long stretches without weighing yourself.  It could be during that time that you put on some pounds, when suddenly you get hit with a wake-up call.  That might not be enough to get you going, but at least it plants a thought somewhere back in your brain.

One of our first signals came when one of our sons went to a football combine.  That is where there are several stations.  In addition to showing things like the 40 year speed, how many bench presses they can do and the vertical leap, the combine also measures their height and weight.

The weight is one of the first stops.  The talk during the combine was that one of the linemen on our team was at 310 pounds.

Once all the kids got through the scale, we thought we would help the combine out and see how well the scale was calibrated.  We put ourselves on the scale.  It was a shock.  We had not weighed ourselves in a long time.  We were now up in offensive lineman category.  We would like to say we started a program that day, but it did not begin until many months later.  At least we got the thought started.  Half of solving a problem is being aware that there is one.

Another beauty of your weighing yourself it that it is easy to measure.  Step on a scale and you get pretty quick feedback.

Weighing yourself once a day can be fine enough for you.  However, we would do it twice a day, in the morning and at night.

A key is to be consistent.  We liked the morning weighing to be our benchmark.  Also use the same scale.  Scales can vary- it’s not so much what the exact weight is, but instead, what is the trend.

Keep track of the weight of course.  You may notice some plateaus and minor variations.  Those are OK.  You are more interested in the long term results.

There is a short term thing we paid attention to- if there was a little blip in the results. 

Suppose you went out for dinner one night or ate a little more than you should have.  We did once in awhile.  The important is that we did not make it a habit.  What can get a diet off track is when you go astray for several days in a row.

That’s where the daily weighing comes in.   Say we had the dinner and then we come in up 3 pounds the next morning.  That gave us leverage.  Our subconscious mind said we needed to get back on track.  We were even more motivated for a real good workout the day after the meal.  We were set to watch carefully what we ate.

More often then not, by having our eye on the ball, we were back on track within a day or two.

So can you, if you know where you stand.  So stand on that scale.  The same scale.  The same time.