If you’re trying to reach a healthier body weight, one of the most stressful things you can do is to obsess over the numbers you are seeing on the scale. You need to track your progress toward your goal, but if you are stressing over the scale every day, or several times a day, you could be sabotaging your own success.
First of all, realize that your body weight will fluctuate throughout the day and from one day to the next. This can be due to water retention, inflammation, or any other number of reasons. So you are better served to check your weight every few days, or if your long-term goal is several weeks or months out, step on the scale once a week and record your weight loss trend over a longer span.
Also, your goal should be to build a strong, healthy body, not an emaciated one. I encouraged you earlier to engage in full body resistance exercise. Doing so will not only help you shed body fat, but also build lean muscle mass. Since muscle weighs more than fat, the numbers on the scale can be misleading. The scale might belie the fact that you are building health by changing your body composition.
So scale back your time on the scale. While tracking progress is an essential step to achieving a goal, obsessing over it can be stressful and counterproductive.
