Students who weigh themselves daily tend to gain less weight than other students, or even lose weight. However, I wouldn’t immediately recommend weighing yourself daily if you want to lose weight.
Weighing Every Day = Knowing
It wouldn’t surprise me if beautiful prose and poetry have been written about the love-hate relationship with the scale, that instrument of the devil.
You can have lengthy discussions about the usefulness of weighing yourself every day to measure body weight and for whom. Should weight determine your ultimate goal or do you use other indicators such as body fat percentage, waist circumference, strength, vitality, or happiness? The title of this article may not sit well with everyone. Even if you see benefits from the scale, daily weighing can quickly seem excessive and ineffective. It is therefore good to immediately place caveats on the research that yields such a statement.
Researchers from Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania discovered that female students who ‘periodically’ weighed themselves every day during the 2-year study lowered their BMI. This did not happen with students who had not weighed themselves daily during a period somewhere in these two years. This immediately raises a lot of questions: ‘How long was that period?’, ‘did other students, with whom they were compared, weigh themselves periodically such as every week?’ Especially since you want to know if the result was achieved because there was a period of weighing for a long time and to what extent specifically the daily measuring is influential.
294 women participated in the study. At the beginning, after 6 months, and after 2 years, their weight and body fat percentage were measured. The women also filled out surveys about their ‘weighing habits’. The researchers refer to previous studies that showed that self-weighing can prevent weight gain in overweight individuals who have previously lost weight. Weighing as a yo-yo effect prevention. The researchers from Drexel and Pennsylvania wanted to know if weighing itself could also lead to weight loss in women who were not participating in a weight loss program.
Academic Pounds
They were particularly interested in students because statistically, they tend to gain weight relatively more. According to a 2009 study, 70% of American students gain weight in their first year [2]. The weight gain in these freshmen is four to eight pounds, almost six times that of the average population. You know the drill; from mom’s meals to pizza, beer, and frozen dinners.
To their surprise, it turned out that women who had weighed themselves for at least one period did not gain weight on average but lost weight. The differences in BMI after 2 years were small but statistically significant compared to women who had not weighed themselves every day. The latter group also showed little difference in BMI after two years, so those ‘academic pounds’ seemed to be not that significant in this study.
The losses in BMI and body fat percentage were modest, but still significant, especially keeping in mind that these women were not part of a weight loss program. We did not expect that, in the absence of a weight loss intervention, folks would be losing weight.
Diane Rosenbaum, University of Pennsylvania.
Additionally, it was noticeable that the women who weighed themselves (at some point in the two years) every day had a higher BMI and body fat percentage at the beginning than other participants. A study from 2015 had shown that people with higher weight are less likely to weigh themselves. The researchers take into account the possibility that overweight people consciously avoid the scale in those results. In that study, the participants were adults.
This study specifically looked at students, and if I may theorize for a moment, I can imagine that this is a rather unique population in terms of motivation. For some, the transition from high school to college is precisely the chance for a fresh start. Overweight appears to be the most common reason for being bullied in high school. College is simply the period of personal transformation, and I can imagine that you are more motivated to weigh yourself when you start college as a freshman and want to leave behind a history of overweight and possible fat shaming, than the average student who may still have to deal with overweight. I can also imagine that you are more motivated at that age than, for example, at a later age. Something about old dogs and new tricks.
You may also wonder if there is a cause and effect relationship. Do the weighing students lose weight because they weigh themselves daily or do they weigh themselves daily because they think more about their weight?
In my opinion, the research doesn’t say much more than that the likelihood of gaining weight is greater when you don’t pay attention to it at all. But whether you should weigh yourself every day…
As I stepped on the glass
A blue light caught my eye
As the digital numbers
Began climbing so high
And just then it hit me
as I looked at my weight
that my body is fat
but this scale is great
References
- Rosenbaum, D.L., Espel, H.M., Butryn, M.L. et al. J Behav Med (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-017-9870-y
- Lloyd-Richardson, E. E., Bailey, S., Fava, J. L., & Wing, R. (2009). A prospective study of weight gain during the college freshman and sophomore years. Preventive Medicine, 48, 256–261.
- Linde JA, Jeffery RW, French SA, Pronk NP, Boyle RG. Self-weighing in weight gain prevention and weight loss trials. Ann Behav Med. 2005 Dec;30(3):210-6. PubMed PMID: 16336072.
