Why Weighing Yourself Every Day is Bad for Your (Mental) Health

If you are, like many other people, constantly fighting to lose weight and failing, it might be not because you are doing it wrong, but because you are putting too much mental pressure on yourself.

Changing your body, your eating and fitness habits is not easy, and we are making it even harder by putting ourselves through the torture of weighing, measuring, counting calories and constantly comparing to that magic number we think we should see.

Using a weight scale on a daily basis is bad, for a number of reasons.

First, your daily weight fluctuates and this is absolutely normal. The average adult’s weight fluctuates up to 5 or 6 pounds per day. It all comes down to what and when you eat, drink, exercise, and even sleep.

Second, you can’t see weight loss results in just one day!!! You can’t even count on seeing it in a full week. Anything less but two weeks is not relevant: your results can trick you into thinking that you are either doing great or doing really bad.

Third, the psychological pressure of daily measurements is simply too high! You get up in the morning, finish what you need to, your mood is good, you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Then you step on the scale and…..aaaaah. How the heck did I gain even though I only had a small amount of food for dinner?

I say: stop! Let me tell you my story of how I made my life better by ditching the daily weighing routine.

My weight loss (success) story

In my twenties and most of my thirties, I was obsessed with my body image, always needing to shred those last 5 pounds. I counted everything: my calorie intake, calorie burn, daily steps taken, size of my thighs, everything.

I felt miserable every time I failed to reach my daily goals. After a while, I realized that I feel miserable most of the time and that I need to do something about it.

Step 1: Get rid of the scale

The first thing I did to successfully start my weight loss journey is to hide away my scale. Those 20-seconds of truth I had to face every morning were gone, but the rest of my fitness and diet aspirations were not – I was still keeping my schedules.

This was not an easy thing for me. I was constantly fearing that by not weighing myself every day I would lose control. I had imagined spiraling out and gaining weight without even noticing it.

Of course, this was not true. What I did though was to follow some simple rules to help overcome my fears.

Step 2: Set a long term weight loss goal

I’ve also learned to be sensible and not expect overnight miracles. I knew that losing weight fast was unhealthy and can do more harm than good to my body.

So I’ve set a long term weight loss goal. And I did not use a number for that goal, I used: a pair of my old jeans.

Yes, you’ve read it well. I had this one pair of my jeans I always knew I looked great in, the only problem was I couldn’t fit in them anymore. So I gave myself a goal to wear them 6 months from my weight loss journey start.

Some of you might think that 6 months is a long time, and it is, but it is also the time needed to make sure that you not only lose weight at a healthy pace but that you also are able to keep the weight off after those 6 months.

Remember: habits are hard to break and also hard to make, but once you do get them on the right track your weight loss success will be guaranteed.

Step 3: Weight loss success: Reinventing your fitness and your diet

Losing weight is based on a simple principle: if you burn more calories than you take in, you’ll lose weight. If your intake is higher than your burn, you’ll add weight.

The principle might be simple but the execution of it in real-life circumstances is difficult. We have busy schedules, are under constant stress, and food can be our calm best friend.

Question is: which food will you choose to be friends with? The good ones or the bad ones?

The same goes for fitness: if you are not addicted to it, and if you are not the self-motivated type, dropping your fitness schedule is an easy thing to do. That’s why you need help: help with starting your fitness regime, finding the right motivation and keeping it, and help and support of the community that’s on the same journey as you.

I’ve found all of it on the HOLOFIT VR Fitness platform, check out how HOLOFIT brings motivation in your fitness routine here.

HOLOFIT has more than 100 workout options brought to you through amazing and entertaining virtual worlds. It makes sure that you forget about the pain and time needed to finish a workout and focus only on the fun of getting the best results. And it has a great community of people just like you, that have managed to overcome obstacles on their weight loss journeys and become happy and healthy again.

So, if you are ready to help yourself become happy and healthy then head on to where you keep your weight scale, lock it up into a dark place, and don’t take it out at least for a month.

Then get into the HOLOFIT community to start your fitness program now. I’m sure you’ll have much, much success!