Weighing yourself often is a good thing, especially if you like to track your progress. We weigh ourselves every time we’re in the gym, using the same set of scales for consistency.
Taking a scientific approach is a sure-fire way to make sure you achieve your goals. If you use an app for your Nutrition such as MyFitnessPal, it will plot a graph of your weight over time automatically, updating it whenever you enter your weight!
See below for an example of how you can use graphs to track your progress. By measuring bodyweight every gym session and recording it in MyFitnessPal, you can make sure you hit your goals. This is a graph for cutting after a bulking phase, where 6.3kg was lost in just 3 months, all without losing muscle mass!
Graphing your progress is a useful tool, enabling you to see if your current training plan and diet are working for you. If you don’t see the changes in weight that you anticipated, you can tweak your diet and continue to monitor your progress to get yourself back on track.
An important thing to remember, especially if you weigh yourself frequently, is that your weight can fluctuate quite a lot day to day. Don’t be disheartened if you put on a pound or two overnight – bodyweight fluctuates quite a lot and this could be any number of things (water, food, the clothes you are wearing etc.).
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“It’s important to remember that your weight can fluctuate quite a lot day to day. Time of day, diet and clothing will all have an effect.”
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Weighing yourself regularly can help you to get to know the fluctuations in your own weight so you know what range your weight should fall into. Weighing yourself at the same time of day, and in the same clothing, can help reduce these fluctuations so you get a more comparable measurement day to day.
Weight can be misleading though, especially for someone who is gaining muscle as well as losing fat. Your body composition may be changing and you could look better in the mirror even though your weight hasn’t changed. In this situation, knowing your measurements combined with some before/after pictures may help you to see your progress better than just weight alone.
Monitoring your progress is important as it will keep you motivated – especially if you set yourself a target to work towards! So weigh and measure yourself as often as you need to track your progress, I would say twice a week at the very least, and set goals so you have something real to aim for.