Using this approach, people lost 10 percent of their body weight.
Getting on the scales and recording the figure each day can increase weight loss, research finds.
Weighing oneself daily is linked to losing 10 percent of body weight over the year, a study has found.
Critically, people were able to maintain this weight loss over the subsequent year.
Continuing the habit of daily weighing is important since many people regain lost weight over time.
However, keeping tabs on any weight gain helps people adjust their diet and ensure they are getting enough exercise.
Another study has found that combining daily weighing with tracking food intake can double weight loss.
Professor David Levitsky, the study’s senior author, said:
“You just need a bathroom scale and an excel spreadsheet or even a piece of graph paper.
It forces you to be aware of the connection between your eating and your weight.
It used to be taught that you shouldn’t weigh yourself daily, and this is just the reverse.”
The study included 162 people, half of whom used a series of 1 percent targets to lose weight.
The other half acted as a control group.
People in the active weight loss group targeted a 1 percent loss.
Then, when they reached that target, they tried to lose another 1 percent.
This continued until they had lost 10 percent.
People used their own methods to lose weight, including cutting out snacking and eating less.
The results showed that those who weighed themselves frequently lost more weight and maintained this weight loss.
The results also showed that men lost more weight using this method than women, Professor Levitsky said:
“It seems to work better for men than women, for reasons we cannot figure out yet.”
Self-weighing seems to work by improving weight loss behaviours, Professor Levitsky said:
“We think the scale also acts as a priming mechanism, making you conscious of food and enabling you to make choices that are consistent with your weight.”
The study was published in the Journal of Obesity (Pacanowski & Levitsky, 2015).
