Study Finds How Often You Should Weigh Yourself for Weight Loss or Maintenance

Stick to a schedule.

If you're on a weight loss journey, you're probably stepping on a bathroom scale frequently to check in on your progress. It turns out that just how often you step on that scale might have a correlation to how much progress you're making. 

A study recently published in the Obesity journal sought to find connections between how often someone trying to lose weight weighs themselves and how much weight they actually end up losing. The researchers studied 74 overweight or obese adults with an average age of 50 and tracked them over a nine-month maintenance period after they completed a three-month weight loss program. Participants were asked to monitor their weight, food intake, and activities as well as record which days they weighed themselves every week. 

In the end, they found that those who weighed themselves at least three days per week were more likely to have maintained their weight loss at the end of the nine months. Those who tracked their stats for five days or more each week were likelier to continue losing weight. Meanwhile, tracked the info just one or two days per week was associated with "significant weight gain." 

The sweet spot for weight maintenance appeared to be three to four days per week. 

"Patterns of self-monitoring may be important beyond the total number of records completed; associations observed after controlling for total number of records kept during the maintenance period suggest that a 'slow and steady' approach (e.g., consistently self-monitoring at least three to five days per week) may be more beneficial for weight-loss maintenance compared with shorter 'bursts' of higher levels of self-monitoring (e.g., some weeks of monitoring seven days per week but others of only one to two days per week)."

The study also opened the door for more research, as there were some limitations with the findings. "Results cannot be interpreted causally," the scientists acknowledged. Still, the research is "unique in its exploration of thresholds for self-monitoring of dietary intake among individuals who were encouraged to continue daily self-monitoring during a post-intervention maintenance period."

There's no harm in weighing yourself, but if you want to embark on a weight loss journey, talk with your doctor first.