If you’re worried about weight gain, a new study says that it may help to weigh yourself daily. The psychological strategy appears to spur behavioral change when someone sees a discrepancy in their day-to-day weight.
Studying the effects of weighing yourself
A team of researchers from the Department of Foods and Nutrition at the University of Georgia recruited adults between the ages of 18 and 65 and had them complete three visits. The first visit was just before the Thanksgiving holiday season started, the second visit was right after the holiday season ended and the final visit was 14 weeks after they started the study.
The participants were asked how frequently they weighed themselves and told them to try to maintain their initial weight throughout the study period by the method of their choosing; either diet or exercise.
There was also a control group, who was not given any instructions at all.
When the study wrapped up, the researchers found that those participants who had weighed themselves daily and received a graphical representation of how their weight had changed had either lost weight or maintained their weight throughout the study. Those who didn’t weigh themselves daily gained weight.
Why the approach worked
“Maybe they exercise a little bit more the next day after seeing a weight increase, or they watch what they are eating more carefully,” says lead researcher Jamie Cooper, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Foods and Nutrition at the University of Georgia. “The subjects self-select how they are going to modify their behavior, which can be effective because we know that interventions are no one-size-fits-all.”
More research needs to be done. For now, the scientists aren’t sure whether self-weighing each day—without the graphical representation—would produce the same effect.
The research was published in the journal Obesity.
