If you’re working on losing a few {or a lot} pounds, you probably understand the battle with the scale. Should you weigh-in every day or should you designate a day to record your wins and losses?

Why I decided to weigh-in every day doesn’t have to do with continually checking my ups and downs. Instead, it has to do with creating habits.

I’m no expert when it comes to fitness, nutrition or weight loss, and I only have one test subject {which is me}, but I’m sharing my habits & my journey to lose weight and increase my fitness in hopes that I might inspire someone out there. Because I know some people have inspired me. Check out this post – 3 Things to Learn From Your Friend’s Weight Loss Journey.

I also use this gameboard tracker to record progress in my journey.

Should You Weigh-in Every Day?

There are countless articles and studies on habits & weight loss. Some say that you should weigh-in every day, some disagree. I didn’t follow any given research, I decided how I would track my progress, and it’s worked for me, so far.

It’s essential that you get to know yourself and figure out what motivates you on a personal level to create habits and achieve your goals.

Why I Weigh-in Everyday

I weigh in every morning first thing because it creates a habit. Honestly, it’s not for the number on the scale, it’s because it creates a pattern, a momentum for the rest of the day. Since I chose to create a healthier lifestyle as a focus in my life, it’s my way of aligning my thinking every morning with the way I want to live my life.

Never in my life would I think that I would be an advocate for creating habits. But habits have been the thing to help me make the most improvements in my life. And when it comes to weight loss or a health journey, it’s no different.

What Does Habit Have to Do With It?

Over the past two years, I’ve read a lot of books on habits. If you were to ask to distill them all down into a one-paragraph summary, I would say: “Habits create a framework for your life. Automate processes for the actions you don’t want to consciously think about so you can focus your attention and daily energy on the activities that produce joy and significance in your life.”

In other words, I want to train myself so those healthy decisions (should I eat this, or do I need that?) to become second nature. And I have learned that if you want something to become second nature, you have to focus on it and create a habit so when the practice ‘takes’ you don’t have to think about it anymore.

Habit Books

Many people don’t like to step on the scale every day and instead designate a ‘weigh-in day.’ When I forget on that appointed day, I would feel like a failure, even though it wasn’t a big deal.

If I make a habit of weighing in every morning after I wake up, and it spurs me into making the right choices throughout the day. I’m sure you know this, but if you mess up one day, it doesn’t mean you’ve messed up all of the days.

I know a lot of people and studies state that it is not about weight, it’s about how you feel, it’s about how your clothes fit, etc. Well, I’ve been there, done that and I cheat on it. So I need something tangible to track and action to do each day to focus on my end goal.

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How Weighing-in Every Day Sets the Tone for the Day

Stepping on the scale every day helps me look forward to making healthy choices day-to-day, so I can see the impact it has overall.

I’m not saying that you have to create this habit for you, especially if it hinders your progress instead of helps you. I know it helps me and from what I’ve read and experienced, one person’s practice can impact you more than knowing the statistics from hundreds or thousands of people.

Habits & Weight Loss Tips

First of all, to quote Gretchen Rubin in her book Better Than Before I want to decide not to decide – I want it to become a habit to live well and eat right. Secondly, habit tracking has taught me that we manage what we monitor. I know that it works for me. I’ve been able to make and break habits in my day-to-day life.

So tracking every food every single day and weighing and recording every morning helps me monitor and keeps my goal top of mind. But all of these things work ONLY if I make it a priority.

A habit will only successfully form if it is given priority while you are developing it. I found a quote a while ago “wherever you are, be ALL there” and I think that this certainly applies.

Decide on your goal, then focus all your efforts to help you achieve that goal. Track the things that you need to track, make the choices that you need to make, every day. Do the hard things every day. Eventually, these choices will sink in, and they will become a habit. That’s the goal for me. Focus until I create habits.

What’s working for me:

What works for me may not work for you, but feel free to take notes and experiment or try it out. I’m sharing because I hope you might find something to help you on your journey, whether it’s losing weight or not.

• Make your health journey a priority.
• Make it a project – choose to enjoy it.
• Don’t try and get away with something.
• Figure out a suitable compromise (have the eggs, sausage & bacon, but forego the tortilla).
• Eat the things that give you the most return for your investment.
• Eat your favorite breakfast, or drink your favorite breakfast shake to start off the day right.
• Decide if it’s worth it before consuming it.
• If you overspend for a meal, adjust the rest of your day. Remind yourself: just because one moment is lost doesn’t mean the whole day is shot.
• Weigh-in every day.
• Record every meal.
• Record every snack.
• Have an incentive to stick with it! Mine is if I cancel before a particular time, I will be charged a fee.
• Plan meals ahead of time.
• Get active!
• Make it your goal, then work like it’s your goal.

Hiding in Plain Sight?

Many of these insights are hiding in plain sight and are quite obvious, but I tend to ignore the simple and look for something more complicated.

Keep in mind that what works for me does not necessarily work for you. You need to find your own motives and regimens that work for you. But finding inspiration from someone else is a fantastic way to start exploring your motivations.

The Most Significant Thing to Make a Difference (Hint – It’s Not the Scale):

I asked myself if I was really ready to make a drastic change – and my inner self agreed that I finally was willing to make fundamental changes without reservation. I’ve tried to follow the same path in the past, but I was never ‘ready,’ never fully committed, always finding a way to ‘cheat’ or get around the rules.

This time, I wanted it to be permanent. I wanted to create a habit in my life and change the way I carried out my life, so that means I needed to change my day-to-day functions, at the core, I needed to create new habits and break old ones. Part of that is tracking every single day and weighing in every morning.

What permanent change do you want to make (and what habit have you been avoiding)?