Why daily weighing is better

I know some people don’t like weighing—especially daily—because it leads to disordered eating. But for me it tends to help, when I remember to do it! 

Here’s why:

Nothing moves in a straight line.

If you’ve ever looked at stock market values, temperature changes, basically anything you can track over time, you'll know that they’re always ziggedy-zaggedy, with ups and downs and “corrections.” Tracking daily allows you to get used to the uppy-downy, and know that it’s part of an overall pattern. Tracking once a week, or less regularly, you only get the blips, not the full picture. I was reminded of this recently by a progress graph someone posted online:

Lots of ups and downs. This is a mountain range! Now, imagine if they had only weighed on three days over that period. They might think their weight was following the orange line:

This line—although accurate—only tells a small part of the story, and might make it seem like their weight is basically static, with a slight increase! But look at the overall trend:

It’s going down. You see that when you track every day, not when you only track once in a while. You can also start to see patterns, recognize good days and bad days, maybe figure out triggers, but more importantly, know that even if you’re going in the wrong direction one day, you can correct your course, you aren’t permanently derailed.

I've only been keeping track for a week this time, and not remembering to weigh daily, but enough to notice the usual two-steps-forward-one-step-back pattern. And the important thing to remember about that is it’s still a net of one step forward towards the goal.