Sunday, August 7, 2011

Daily Weight Tracking

Yesterday, Biz had a disappointing weigh in at Weight Watchers, and she was looking for some cheerleading.  I was happy to oblige.  One of the tips that I gave her was to weigh yourself every day.  I know that WW discourages this so that you don't get "obsessed".  But as an engineer, I prefer to have knowledge...knowledge of how my weight fluctuates day to day NORMALLY. 

My weight fluctuates over the course of a month, but it also changes depending on what I eat.  If I eat processed for or other overly salty food (meals out or pickles, for example), then I will retain water.  This was no more true than my first weigh in on WW online two weeks ago, where I'd gained weight from the week before.  The day before the weigh in I'd gone to two parties.  There were tacos, chips and bean dip, bacon wrapped water chestnuts...and even though I stayed within my weekly points and didn't use any of my 41 activity points for the week, I gained.  And the weight stayed high for 3 days.

By getting on the scale daily, I can see not only how sodium affects my weight - which both lets me relax about the gains AND reminds me to be careful about sodium - BUT I can also see that my weight fluctuates for no obvious reasons.  It's the overall downward trend that matters.

So here's a graph of my weight for the last 3 weeks, since I started counting my points again.  Peaks and valleys, but with an overall downward trend.  For fun, I am saving a copy of my daily meals and exercise in a folder in my computer, so someday I can look back and see what was successful and what was not.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

really good advice Marcia!